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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Shelf .OS 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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V. 



INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 



A REPLY 



BY 

EEV. SAMUEL lYES CURTISS, D. D., 

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, LEIPZIG ; LICENTIATE OF THEOLOGY, BEELIN ; PRO- 
FESSOR OF OLD TESTAMENT LITERATURE AND INTERPRETATION 
IN CHICAGO THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY; AUTHOR OF 
•' THE LEVIXICAL PRIESTS," ETC. 



WITH NOTES AND APPENDICES. 



CHICAGO: ' " 



JANSEN, McCLURG & COMPANY. 

1880. , I ' V I 

^- /J - 






COPYRIGHT : 

Jansen, McClurg & Co., 
A. D. 1879. 



STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED 

BY 

THE CHICAGO LEGAL NEWS COMPANY. 



TO 
THE YOUNG MEN OF THE NORTHWEST, 

THIS LITTLE WORK, BY ONE OF THEIR OWN NUMBER, 
IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. 



PEEFAOE, 



It may seem to many a useless task to publish a reply 
to that which is considered by some as its own refutation. 
Such however, ignore the insidious and wide-spread 
influence of the author of The Mistakes of Moses. If it 
should appear to the physician that a specific compound 
is sure death to some who may receive it, he ought not to 
decline to seek an antidote because he despises the man- 
ufacturer of the drug as a charlatan, but is bound to em- 
ploy his best skill in preparing a remedy. 

It may be deemed wiser, instead of indicating the 
poison by its vulgar name, learnedly to warn people 
against using its constituent parts, lest we should bring 
the very thing into notice which we wish to suppress. 
In other words many will say, to combat Ingersoll is to 
advertise him, and make that prominent which might 
otherwise be forgotten. If any hold this view of the 
case, I beg leave to diifer with them. Hence I have pre- 
pared these pages to meet the wants of those who have 
known that IngCi soli's address was full of sophistries 

(5) 



6 PREFACE. 



and errors, but have not had the means at hand for refut- 
ing them. I therefore offer both to the clergy and the 
laity this little work, which is the fruit of extended read- 
ing and research. There is but one class of readers for 
whom I have not written. I refer to those who, without 
weighing evidence, will affirm as soon as they see the 
covers of this book, or perhaps on the basis of a garbled 
extract, that Ingersoll cannot be answered, hence, that 
he has not been answered in this case. My desire howev- 
er, is not for personal reputation. Should it appear that 
better arguments can be offered than are here afforded, I 
should rejoice at the discovery of the fact. Whatever may 
be the success of this and similar efforts, let it be remem- 
bered, that the most potent argument against infidelity, 
is a life which is hid with Christ in God, which would 
rather suffer reproach, poverty, and even death itself, than 
bring disgrace upon Him who gave Himself a ransom for 
many. 

S. I. c. 
Chicago, September, 1879. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

Introduction, • • • 9 

CHAPTER 11. 
The Creative Week, 16 

CHAPTER III. 
The First Family in Eden, 26 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Deluge and the Confusion of Tongues, • • • 35 

CHAPTER V. 
Israel's Exodus and Wanderings, . . , , , 42 

CHAPTER VI. 

Israel's Customs and Laws, ...,,. 58 

CHAPTER VII. 

Various Misstatements by IngersoU, 73 

(7) 



8 CONTENTS. 

APPENDIX A. 
The Appointment of Luminaries, • • • • • 91 

APPENDIX B. 
"The Sons of God," 93 

APPENDIX C. 
Traditions Concerning the Flood, 95 

APPENDIX D. 

The Rapid Increase of the Israelites in Egypt, • , 100 

APPENDIX E. 

The Former Condition of the Wilderness of Smai, . 101 

APPENDIX F. 

"The Land Flowing with Milk and Honey," . . 107 

APPENDIX a. 
Ramses II and Moses • • 111 

APPENDIX H. 
Roman Slavery, • » 112 

APPENDIX I. 
Does the Bible Favor Polygamy? ., ... 113 

Index, ••• 115 



INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 



CHAPTEK I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

Summary: A Lesson for us from the first Chapter of Romans — 
Ingersoll's Method — The Scriptures should not be Rejected 
without Sufficient Cause — Monotonous "Hoots" — Creeds and 
some "Solemnly Stupid" Graduates of Andover — Was Moses 
the Author of the Pentateuch? — Ingersoll's Caricature of the 
Bible. 

The Apostle Paul, in that terrible picture which he 
draws of the sensuality and abominable vices of the 
heathen world — a picture which every classical scholar 
and missionary acknowledges to be strictly true^ — 

1 Cf. Plato's Symposium, 191, etc. 

For some remarks on the vice of paiderastia, in Greece, see Lecky's His- 
tory of European Morals, New York, 1869, Vol. II, p. 311, Allusion is also made 
to that which obtained among the Lesbian women, and which is said to be 
found in some parts of Africa in Reade's Savage Africa, New York, 1864, p. 
424. Instances of a want of natural affection among heathen nations, both 
ancient and modern, are abundant ; (a) the poor and sick were left to per- 
ish. Bibliotheca Saa'a, Andover, 1863, Vol. XX, p. 232 ; Quarterly Review, Lon- 
don, 1809, Vol. I, p. 219. (&.) The aged were often left alone to die ; Catlin, 
The North American Indians, Philadelphia, 1857, Vol. I, p. 335-7. Jenkins in 
the Voyage of the U. S. Exploring Squadron, Aubnrn, 1852, p. 349, says : 
"Among the Fejees, old people are frequently put to death at their 

(9) 



10 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

assigns the reason for that melancholy dee^radation. 
The heathen, he says, who once had the truth respect- 
ing God, exchanged it for a lie, and therefore wor- 
shipped the creature instead of the Creator. 

Who may not see in IngersolPs caricature of God, 
and in his apotheosis of wife and children, the prelim- 
inaries of a similar process, which, if it were to sweep 
Christianity, as he desires, from the earth, would leave 
US with a civilization rotten to the core? 

It is not my intent, however, to tarry upon this, 
point, but to proceed at once to consider his lecture 
delivered in Chicago some weeks ago, entitled The 
Mistakes of Moses ^ 

own desire, to escape decrepitude, and are sometimes forcibly strangled or 
buried alive, by their children. Persons in an infirm condition, or sick of 
a lingering disease, are often served in the same manner." 

(c) Infanticide has been most prevalent. It was "almost universally 
admitted among the Greeks," and was "a crying vice of the [Roman] em- 
pire." Lecky, ibid., pp. 27-29; it has been observed among the North 
American Indians, Missionary Herald, Boston, 1823, Vol. XIX, p. 9 ; and has 
abounded in India, Quarterly Review, London, 1809, Vol. 1, p. 219. Jahrbucher 
der Literaiur, Wien, 1818, Vol. II, p. 326 ; in China, Hug, A Journey Through 
the Chinese Empire, New York, Vol. II, p. 332 ; Doolittle, Social Life of the 
Chinese, New York, 1865, Vol. II, p. 203-9 ; and in the South Sea Islands. 

Eev John Williams, in his Narrative of Missionary Enterprises, London, 1838, 
p. 479, says of the women of the Society Islands : " I never conversed with 
a female that had borne children prior to the introduction of Christianity 
who had not destroyed some of them, and frequently as many as from five 
to ten." The universal testimony is that Christianity has proved a check to 
these practices. A writer in the Qaarterly Review, London, 1809, Vol. I, p, 216, 
says of itr " All human affections and instincts are on its side in Hindo- 
stan ; it forbids the mother to expose or sacrifice her child the widow to be 
burnt with her husband's corpse, the son to set Are to his living mothers 
funeral pile." 

iThe edition used is that of Rhodes & McClure, Chicago, 1879. 



INTRODUCTION. 11 



I have no doubt that the author possesses the rarest 
tact in interesting an audience, and I can understand 
how he succeeds in captivating some of our young 
men. And yet, after scanning his lecture, he seems 
to me like one of those old sophists who professed 
their ability to maintain any position. Indeed, ac- 
cording to my thinking, he appears in just the same 
role in which he accuses the clergy of appearing, 
namely, that of an advocate. lie has searched the Bi- 
ble through that he might find blemishes on which 
to display his ridicule. This is indeed a possible way 
of studying art and literature. He reminds me of a 
character in the Meister Sanger^ who found only dis- 
cords and mistakes in his rival's music, which en- 
tranced every other ear. He is deaf to those majestic 
strains of Christianity which have been growing in 
sweetness and harmony throughout the centuries. 
Kather than enjoy the fragrance of the flowers of 
Scripture, he passes them to light, if possible, upon 
some dunghill. He is as fair in his discussion of the 
Bible as one who should make some of Ophelia's songs 
in her madness ^ a test of Shakspeare's genius, or of 
the value of his immortal creations. 

I would not, however, be understood as implying 
that there are blemishes in the Bible. I am merely 

''■Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 5. 



12 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

endeavoring to show how irrational this method is. 
Before I could be content to be a deist, and think that 
perhaps there was " in immensity some being beneath 
whose wing the universe exists, whose every thought 
is a glittering star," but who had left this poor world 
to take its course, and all his creatures to suffer with- 
out one word of sympathy, I should want to weigh 
the matter well before rejecting that Book which is 
associated with a mother's prayers and tears, and the 
holiest influences of childhood. Before embarking on 
the shoreless, starless sea of atheism, I should want 
something more than the Mistakes of Moses^ served 
up by a politician who wants " the people splendid 
enough " to put a man at the head of the State who 
does not believe in any moral governor of the uni- 
verse. 

But we must not delay here. Let us take up the 
various assertions with which Mr. Ingersoll is trying 
to subjugate the West to atheism. 

He professes to be a kind friend of the ministers, 
and wishes to free them as far as possible from the 
tyranny of creeds, so that they need no longer, owl-like, 
hoot the same " hoots " which their fathers have 
hooted before them. You see how it is. According 
to this new teacher of ethics, there is no definite truth. 



INTRODUCTION. 13 



Is it not sad that our cliildren should be carrying on 
this same process, and be hooting the hoots that the 
inventor of the multiplication table hooted, when he 
used to say five times one are five? 

Ought not Ingersoll, since he is such a friend of 
education, to seek a reform in this particular, so that 
the children may be independent enough to say five 
times one are six? 

Is it not, however, reasonable to suppose that there 
should be exact truth about the being and attributes 
of God, which can never change, and that he should 
reveal it to his creatures? 

The narrowness of Andover Theological Seminary, 
because it has a creed, is held up for derision, and its 
ministers are cited as those who " shrink and shrivel, 
and become solemnly stupid, day after day." Dr. 
Richard Salter Storrs, of Brooklyn, is a pretty good 
example of this shriveling process, and there are 
scores of others;^ 

And now we come to Robert Ingersoll's charge, that 
''Moses never wrote one word of the Pentateuch." 
When I consider Ingersoll's untiring devotion to crit- 

1 The Triennial Catalogue of the Theological Seminary, Andover, 1870, shows a 
splendid galaxy of names, such as those of Leonard Bacon, S. C, Bartlett, 
W. I. Budington, Joseph Cook, Roswell D. Hitchcock, Adonir.im Judson, 
Edwards A. Park, H. B. Smith, Gardiner Spring, Wm. Hayes Ward— men 
who have been and are anything but "solemnly stupid." 



14 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

ical investigation, and some of his remarkable discov- 
eries, which I shall mention hereafter, I might be 
tempted to believe the assertion. But soberly, 
although there are not a few critics who maintain the 
same view, I am old fashioned enough to take the 
assertion, " and Moses wrote this law" (Deut. xxxi : 
9, 24), as proof that he was at least the author of 
of Deuteronomy. This opinion is held by Prof. 
Delitzsch,* and some other eminent scholars,^ and as 
regards the rest of the Pentateuch, something more 
than mere assertion is necessary to disprove the 
Mosaic authorship. Ingersoll, in denying that author- 
ship is simply *^ hooting the hoots" of the critics. It 
would have been well for his reputation if he had 
continued the process throughout his address. 

His entire effort, however, is devoted to breaking 
down the inspiration of the Scriptures. He holds up 
certain facts, pours his sarcasm upon them, and then 
derisively asks; " Can the book which contains such 
statements be true? Can it be inspired?" 

I may as well remark here, that some of the facts of 
the Bible are just about as correctly represented by 

1. See his Commentar vber die Genesis, Leipzig, 1872, p. 20 sq. 

2, Schroder, Das Deuteronominm, Bielefeld, 1866, p. 4 sq. I think that 
Nagelsbach, author of the commentary on Isaiah, C. P. Caspari, who wrote 
uher Miche den Morasthiten, Christiania, 1852, and that Prof. KOhler (?) of 
Erlangen, hold the same view. 



INTBODUCTION. 15 



this scoffer as the cherubs in the Sistine Madonna, with 
their faces turned upward in wrapt adoration, are 
portrayed in some of those horrible caricatures which 
we see in the shop windows. So much by way of cau- 
tion with reference to some of the points which must 
pass in review. 



CHAPTEE 11. 

THE CREATIVE WEEK. 

Summary: Creation out of Nothing — The Bible lays no claim to 
Scientific Accuracy — Its Purpose — It uses Popular Language — 
Object of the Author of Genesis I — Roiation of Light and 
Darkness — The Firmament — The Sun's " Amorous Kiss" — 
Was there no Light on the Third Day? The Luminaries — 
The Sun Standing Still, and the Shadow on the Dial — The His- 
tory of Astronomy in " Five Words " — The Age of the World 
with reference to the passage of Light — Objections to the Text 
of the Old Testament — Specimen of the Light of the Nineteenth 
Century. 

Ingeesoll takes exception to his own version of the 
English Scriptures, when he says that the [one] " who 
wrote [the Bible] begins by telling us that God made 
the universe out of nothing." This, however, is not 
in the English version. There we simply read : " In 
the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." 
It is true that many critics hold that hara^ in connec- 
tion with hereshith^ signifies creation out of nothing, 
and that theologians es]Decially, in view of Heb. xi. 3, 

(16) 



THE CREATIVE WEEK. 17 

teach this doctrine. But then this mistake, if it be a 
mistake, is neither due to Moses in the original nor in 
the translation. Indeed, the only evidence that Inger- 
soll can afford why it is a mistake, is because' it seems- 
un reason able to him. He doubtless believes according 
to the " light of the brain and heart of the nineteenth 
century," which he mentions as our standard of judg- 
ment — that you and I have come into being through 
the force of natural laws; that our eyes^ were pro- 
duced because millions of our progenitors tried to 
see; our ears, because they itched tO' hear.^' Our 
friend, who probably holds all this as sweetly reason- 
able, thinks it irrational that an omnipotent Creator 
should have created the material of the universe. 

He next takes exception to the expression that God 
divided the light from the darkness, and concludes 
that the author must have considered them "entities.'^ 
Before answering this objection, let u& establish the 
proposition once for all, that the Bible does not use 
scientific language, nor does it profess to teach science.. 
We read, 2 Tim. iii, 16-17: " All Scripture is given by 
inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for 
reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteous- 

1 Haeckel, In his Anthropogenie, Leipzig, 1877, p. 565, says : " Originally all: 
the organs of sense were nothing more than parts of the external skin, ini 
which the nerves of sensation have extended themselves." 



18 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

ness, that tlie man of God may be perfect, thoroughly 
furnished unto all good works." You will perceive 
that not one word is said here about a purely intellec- 
tual or scientific teaching; but the design of Scripture, 
its purpose as a whole, is to promote man's righteous- 
ness, ^ow, in following out this purpose, it touches the 
realms of nature and history, and employs them for 
the inculcation of its truths. But as its instructions 
were committed to man for common men in all ages, 
we should not expect to find in the Old Testament 
the technical terms of science. A book thus written 
would have been unintelligible for the mass of man- 
kind. For this reason, the language is phenominal. 
The sacred historian speaks of the sun just as we do 
in common speech, as rising and setting, ^or have 
we any evidence that the astronomical or other knowl- 
edge of the inspired writers, was superior to that of 
the men of their time. They had certain moral truths 
to inculcate. The author of the first chapter of Gen- 
esis, starts out with the proposition that God created 
tlie universe. For a high grade of intelligence, that 
was sufficient. But the Bible was addressed to men 
who needed to have this lesson impressed upon them, 
and who would have their queries, just as your little 
boy after you have told him this same truth, would 
ask: "Papa, did he make the horses?" And when 



THE CREATIVE WEEK. 19 

you liave answered this query, you are by no means at 
the end of your chatechism, for your little questioner 
in rapid succession pursues you: "Did he make the 
trees? Did he make the birds? " ^Now in a polytheis- 
tic age when men worshipped the sun and the moon^ 
trees and animals, it was important to be so explicit as 
to set their minds forever at rest. When we remem^ 
ber these simple principles of interpretation, and do 
not look for Astronomy, Geology and Chemistry 
where they are not to be found, we shall discover that 
a multitude of difficulties will vanish. From this 
point of view, it is not of the slightest consequence 
whether the sacred historian had correct views of the 
relations of light and darkness. It was, however im- 
portant that men should know that God had established 
the relation between them, and that those who in 
certain ages of the world might consider darkness^ as 
the realm of the evil principle, should be assured that 
it was subject to God's control. There is no evidence, 
however, that the author considered darkness an entity 
in the passage before us. 

The same principle applies to the firmament. Mr. 
Ingersoll may make himself as merry as he pleases 
regarding this terminology, for we must not forget the 

1 The Parsees held this opinion ; see the Zend-Avesta, Riga, 1776, pp. 9, 21, etc. 



20 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

lesson wliicli is being taught here is not one in science. 
Let us suppose Mr. Ingersoll, who manifests great 
fondness for children, with a little three-year old prat- 
tler on his knee, who has a language all its own, which 
he, the father, understands — would he not use some of 
that child's words, and adapt himself to its concep- 
tions? "Would he try to strangle and confuse it with 
the technics of science? Why, then, should not our 
Heavenly Father, in revealing himself to the infancy 
of the race, use language which his humblest children 
can comprehend? It is quite possible that the author 
of Genesis had unscientilic notions in regard to the 
laws of evaporation, and the process b}^ which the rain 
falls; but the expression, "windows of heaven," does 
not indicate this. Such an interpretation is very child- 
ishly literal, and is about as reasonable as some of the 
cavils which your twelve-year old literalist makes at 
•your expense. Why, what right has a man who talks 
about the " Sun wooing with amorous kiss the waves 
of the sea," to take exception to God's opening the 
windows of heaven, or to his bowing the heavens 
and coming down? (Ps. xviii, 9.) Or shall we sup- 
pose, with some future IngersoU five hundred years 
hence, that his progenitor literally believed that some 
celestial being, called the Sun, made love to some ter- 



THE CREATIVE WEEK. 21 

restrial maiden (perhaps a mermaid), called the Sea? 
Let us have consistency. If Ingersoli will expunge 
every metaphor, every figure of speech from the Bible, 
then let him speak, if he can, a language unadorned 
with a single rhetorical figure. 

We pass to tlie creation of the third day. I^ot a 
blade of grass, as he asserts, had ever been touched by 
a ray of light. How does Ingersoli know that ? "Well 
might the words addressed to Job be applied to him, 
xxxviii, 2-4: "Who is this that darken eth counsel 
by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins 
like a man ; for I will demand of thee, and answer 
thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the founda- 
tion of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding." 
How dare Ingersoli assert that not a blade of grass had 
ever been touched by a beam of light, when on the 
very first day God created light? How dare he assert 
that the sun and moon were not made before the fourth 
day, when the original does not indicate any more 
than that God lighted up the luminaries by supplying 
the sun with its proper atmosphere?^ 

Of course no skeptical address could be complete 
without reference to the sun's standing still. (Josh. 
X. 12-14.) I need not remind you that this is popular 

iSee Appendix A, 



22 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

language. I do not, however, wish to explain away 
the miracle which underlies it. An omnipotent God 
is able to arrest the course of the universe without 
disastrous consequences. But such a supposition is 
unnecessary. "We must remember that Joshua, when 
we strip the account of its poetical imagery, simply 
prayed for time to overcome his enemies. 

Similarly Agamemnon is represented as praying in 
the Iliad (ii. 412-414). 

Zeus most glorious, most great 
Shrouded in clouds, dwelling in state; 
Let not the sun go down, nor darkness fall, 
Till I overthrow of Priamus the sooty hall, 
And burn with hostile fire his gates. 

According to this interpretation, Joshua's prayer 
would be answered by his being enabled to do two 
days' work in one, although it seemed perhaps to the 
sacred writer, as he read the account in the book of 
Jasher. that the prayer was literally answered. But 
in case it should be best to insist on a miracle of light 
as well as of prowess, there are doubtless ways in which 
God could accomplish the desired phenomenon with- 
out arresting the course of the universe. 

'Nov need we suppose that the motion of the earth 
was reversed so as to afford a sign to the languishing 



THE CREATIVE WEEK. 23 

Hezekiah. Ingersoll says: " IIow miicli easier it would 
have been to cure the boiL" Such a remark betrays 
a very imperfect conception of the Divine Being with 
whom nothing is difficult, as well as an entire misap- 
prehension of the importance of faith. How the 
phenomenon was brought about, which is described 
in 2 Kings, xx, 11, as God's bringing back the shadow 
ten degrees, and in Is. xxxviii, 8, as the sun returning 
ten degrees, we are not bound to tell. It might have 
been as Keil, Delitzsch and others have suggested, by 
a refraction of light. In any case it was doubtless 
local, as appears from the fact that ambassadors from 
the princes of Babylon probably came to enquire in 
regard to it (2 Chr. xxxii, 31). 

I need not point out the absurdity of the assump- 
tion that the sacred writer gives the history of astron- 
omy in the five words " He made the stars also." I 
have shown that the first chapter of Genesis has a 
moral end in view, and this would be subserved by 
assuring a people who might come in contact with 
those who worshipped the host of heaven, that God 
made the stars. Even granting IngersolPs supposi- 
tion, that the light from the remotest nebulae would 
require many millions of years to come to us, there 
is nothino^ in the Biblical account which is contradic- 



24 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

tory to this assumption, since some of the Fathers, even 
before modern scientific discoveries, regarded the cre- 
ative days as indefinite periods. 

But this statement of IngersolPs rests upon an erro- 
neous assumption of Humboldt's. Herschel estimated 
that it would take light about fourteen thousand years 
to come from the remotest objects visible. " But it 
must be admitted," says l^ewcomb,^ " that Herschel's 
estimate of the extent of the Milky Way may be far 
too great, because it rests on the assumption that all 
stars are of the same absolute brightness." Hence, 
according to l^ewcomb and Proctor, we can only as- 
sume, in the language of Professor Esty, of Amherst, 
to whom 1 am indebted for these facts, that it takes 
light some thousands of years to go from one limit to 
another of our visible universe. If, then, we inter- 
pret the days of creation as indefinite periods, as we 
have a perfect right to do, all difiiculty vanishes. 
Hence Genesis does not stand respecting astronomy 
in contradiction to science. 

Mr. Ingersoll endeavors to excite distrust against 
the text of the Old Testament, by asserting that it 
was written entirely without vowels, and without 
being divided into chapters and verses. He is how- 
ever, entirely ignorant of the scrupulous care v^hich 

1 Popular Astronomy, New York 1878, p. 481. 



THE CREATIVE WEEK. 25 

the Hebrews employed in j)reserving their manu- 
scripts. These were at an earlj period divided into 
sections,^ while the slight variations which have crept 
into the sacred text are of interest to the critic, thej 
do not, as we shall see hereafter, essentially eifect its 
teaching. 

1. These Sections, termed in Hebrew, ParasJias, are attributed in the 
Babylonian Gemara Berachoth 12b to Moses: "Every Parasha which Mo- 
ses, our teacher, divided, we divide; those which he did not divide we do 
not divide." Hupfeld remarks in the Htudien und Kritiken, Hamburg, 1837, 
p. 840 ; ** that these divisions are to be referred back to the earliest copies 
of the Holy Scriptures." Compare Home, On Introduction to the Critical 
Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, London 18.9, pp. 35-36. 



CHAPTEE III. 

THE FIRST FAMILY IN EDEN. 

Summatiy: Are the two Accounts of Man's Creation Contradic- 
tory ? — The Logical Order of the Facts in Genesis II — Did God 
seek to palm off an Animal on Man as Helpmeet (!) ? — The 
Creation of Woman from a Rib — Plato's account of the Origin 
of the sexes — What is the Scriptural test of Salvation? — 
Shameless Travesty of the Doctrine of Retribution — " God 
Hates a Critic." — The Narrative of the Fall Confirmed by 
Tradition — Its Consequences Illustrated by Sacred History — 
Why did God not blot out Adam? 

Ingeksoll claims that the two accounts given of the 
creation of man, in tlie first two chapters of Genesis, 
are contradictory. This is not the case. In the first 
chapter, and the first three verses of the second, an 
account is given of God's creative week. Man is 
mentioned as his final creation, because he is the king 
for whom the earth is prepared. In the second chap- 
ter, supplementary matter is introduced, which, ac- 
cording to the author's plan, would have been out of 
place in the first. The facts mentioned in the second 

(26) 



THE FIRST FAMILY IN EDEN. 27 

chapter are put in logical rather than in chronological 
order, as introducing the garden and woman. First 
plants are spoken of (ii, 5). Then it is said that there 
was not a man to till the ground. In this connection 
his creation is mentioned (ii, 7), afterwards the garden 
which he was to till (ii, 8), and the origin of the trees, 
as introducing the tree of knowledge of good and 
evil (ii, 9). In like manner the creation of the ani- 
mals is introduced as preparatory to the account of 
Eve's creation (ii, 18-19). Mr. Ingersoll profanely 
suggests that God tried to palm off one of the animals 
on Adam as his helpmeet. The narrative indicates 
nothing of the kind. Like a wise father he does not pre- 
sent the sweetest and best of his creatures to Adam un- 
til he has caused him to feel his loneliness by showing 
him that there is not one among the brutes who can be 
his companion, (ii. 20). There was certainly divine 
wisdom in thus enabling Adam to appreciate that 
choicest of all earthly gifts, a true and loving wife. 
A man entirely ignorant of oriental imagery, may 
mock, if he will, at the idea of God's making woman 
out of the rib of a man. His laughter is simply the 
insignia of his ignorance. The word which is trans- 
lated rib in this passage, elsewhere, means side. The 
Arabs say of an intimate friend, huva lizq^i — He is 



28 INGEBSOLL AND MOSES. 

my side, and Martial (vi. 68 : 4) speaks of a constant 
companion or friend, as a dulce latus, a sweet side.^ 
]^ow, whether we take the description of woman's cre- 
ation literally or not, there is a deep significance in the 
fact that she was derived from his side by which she 
is to stand ; so that, as Knoble says, if it was the pur- 
pose of the author to say that woman was derived from 
any part of man, he could not well have chosen any- 
thing better than a rib.'' And Matthew Henry pithily 
observes: " Woman was made of a rib out of the side 
of Adam ; not made out of his head to top him, not out 
of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his 
side to be equal with him, under his arm to be pro- 
tected, and near his heart to be beloved." Certainly 
this simple narrative does not suffer when compared 
with Plato's account of the origin of the sexes, which 
are represented as androgenous — that is, as existing 
together, having two faces, four hands, and four feet, 
and as being halved by Jupiter.^ Nor is the story of 
woman's creation, or any other fact of Bible history 
made a test of man's salvation, as Ingersoll, w^ith blas- 
phemous wit, seems to assert; but faith in the Lord 
Jesus Christ (Acts, xvi, 31), which is manifest in a 

1 See Knoble in Dillmann's Genesis, Leipzig, 1875, p. 78. 

2 Die Genesis, Leipzig, 1852, p. 34. 
8 Symposium, 189 etc. 



THE FIRST FAMILY IN EDEN. 29 

pure aud liolj life. (James, ii, 22.) That a defaul- 
ter and adulterer should be received into the heav- 
enly kingdom on the score of his belief in the 
inspiration of the Scriptures, finds no warrant in 
the Bible. Isaiah represents God as indignantly 
denouncing those who engage in acts of worship, 
while their lives are full of wickedness, (i, 10-17.) 
David is not only sternly rebuked for his abom- 
inable sin, but he is assured that on account of it 
the sword shall not depart from his house (2 Sam. xii, 
10), Christ says of the Pharisees, which devour widow's 
houses, and for a pretense make long prayers: " These 
shall receive greater damnation" (Mark xii, 40). And 
it is written in Revelation (xxii, 15) respecting the 
lost; " For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whore- 
mungers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever 
loveth and maketh a lie." !N^ow what a shameless 
travesty it is of the doctrine of retribution for Inger- 
soll to imply that the Bible teaches, or that the church 
teaches, that a man will be saved on the score of 
orthodoxy, whatever he may do. Such a statement is 
infamous ! After making this burlesque of the doctrine 
of rewards and punishments, Ingersoll remarks that 
" of all the authors in the world, God hates a critic 
the worst." There may be some truth in this state- 



30 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

ment, so far as the criticisms are made up of misrep- 
resentations, for we read that the Lord hateth a lying 
tongue (Prov. vi, IT). Certainly that is not honest 
criticism which caricatures, not only the doctrine of 
retribution, but also that of the temptation. A true 
critic would not make light of the scriptural represen- 
tation of the Serpent as the tempter, especially when 
he finds that account confirmed by some of the 
most ancient traditions of the race as contained 
in the Zend-Avesta,^ and the Chaldean tablets 
as given by George Smith.''^ While there are 
striking similarities in these traditions, the Biblical 
account transcends the other two in its noble simplic- 
ity. Dazzled by the serpent's promise, that on eating 
of the forbidden fruit their eyes shall be opened, and 
they shall become as Gods, knowing good and evil, 
both Eve and Adam partake. At once the sad conse- 

1 According to the tradition, contained in the Zend Avesta. man (Mashia 
and Mashiane) was at first created pure and holy, and so remained, until 
Ahriman, who had come long before into the world in the shape of a ser- 
pent, corrupted their thoughts. Windischmann (Zoroastrische Studien, Berlin, 
1863, p. 212) remarks, that " the account of the fall of man has such an ev- 
ident similarity with that of Genesis, that at first sight, one might be in- 
clined to suspect its derivation from that source. But on closer considera- 
tion, it shows quite as great discrepancies, and so peculiar traits, that this 
version of the primitive tradition must pass as original, although it is infer- 
ior to that of Genesis in noble simplicity." Compare, as to the teaching of 
the Parsees on this subject, Spiegel, Farsismus in Herzog's EeaZ Encyklopadie, 
Gotha, 1859, p. 118, and Bunsen, Die Einheit der Religionen, Berlin, 1870, Vol. 
I, p. 35. 

2 The Chaldean Account of Genesis, New York, 1876, p. 87 etc. 



THE FIRST FAMILY IN EDEN. 31 

qnences of man's disobedience are portrayed. In 
Adam's indirectly charging God with being the author 
of his temptation (Gen. iii. 12), we have a proof of 
the working of sin, which dev^elops in natural yet 
frightful consequences in the murder of Abel, in the 
increasing wickedness of the Cainitic race, which fin- 
ally, through the beauty of its female representatives, 
draws away the Sethites, the children of God (Gen. 
vi. 2 ^), from purity, so that at the last the earth is fall 
of violence, and but one family, that of l^oah, remains 
true amidst the general apostacy. It is here that 
Ingersoll vents his spleen against the divine govern- 
ment, and suggests that " God ought to have rubbed 
him [Adam] out at once [immediately after the fall]. 
He mii^ht have known that no ffood could come of 
starting a world like that .... people got worse 
and worse. God, you must recollect, was holding 
the reins of government, but he did nothing for 
them. And the world got worse every day, and finally 
he concluded to drown them. Yet that same God has 
the impudence to tell me how to raise my own chil- 
dren. What would you think of a neighbor who had 
just killed his babes, giving you his views on domestic 
economy ? " 

1 See Appendix B. 



32 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

There is no department of human knowledge where 
questions cannot be raised which baffle us. How 
much more in the realm of theology, where the infi- 
nite is a factor. Then, too, we must remember, that 
when the courts sit in judgment upon men, they col- 
lect every scrap of evidence which can bear upon the 
case before they decide upon its merits. "Now, when 
Ingersoll seeks to impeach the Judge of all the earth, 
it should only be after a full knowledge of the facts. 
But such a trial is from the nature of the case impos- 
sible. It cannot be stated that God did nothing for 
the world; the facts^ are too meagre to allow of that; 
still, the presumptive evidence is the other way; for 
we read that the Sethites began, at an early period, to 
call on the name of the Lord (Gen. iv. 26), and that 
]Noah was a preacher of righteousness (2 Peter ii, 5). 
So far as God's delay of the judgment was concerned, 
it was a mercy to men, for we have no evidence in the 
Scriptures that God annihilates them after death, or 
that the future state of the wicked is one of enjoy- 
ment; therefore, by allowing them to live as long as 
possible, God at least granted them the pleasures of 
this life. 

Ingersoll, however, intimates that all the misery in- 
cident to the deluge might have been avoided if God 



THE FIRST FAMILY IN EDEN. 33 

had destroyed Adam and Eve after the faU. But does 
that follow? So long as God had resolved to people 
the earth with free moral agents, and there was temp- 
tation in the world, can it be affirmed that any man, 
subsequently created, would have been more likely tO' 
stand than Adam? But some one may raise the ques- 
tion, could not God have removed all temptation from 
the earth? Perhaps so. But then where would have- 
been man's virtue? These questions are entirely toO' 
deep for us, and we feel the truth of Zophar's words,. 
Job xi, 7: "Canst thou find out the depth of God?' 
Canst thou find out the end of the Almighty? It is- 
as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than 
sheol; what canst thou know? The measure thereof 
is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea." 

The illustration b}^ which Ingersoll compares God, 
in visiting the earth with a deluge, to a father who 
murders his own babes, is not to the point. Nothing 
can be more horrible than the murder of innocent 
babes. But the world which God proposed to destroy 
had grown old in sin in spite of infinite patience (1 
Peter, iii, 20), and !Noah's preaching (2 Peter, ii, 5) 
Its inhabitants, therefore, can in no respect be com- 
pared to innocent children, for we read (Gen. vi, 11): 
" The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth 
3 



34 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

was tilled with violence." "What remained then for 
God to do, who had seen all the Sethites drawn aside 
from virtue, except JS^oah, but with one fell stroke to 
remove the earth's degraded inhabitants, and then to 
disinfect it with the waters of the flood? 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE DELUGE AND THE CONFUSION OF 
TONGUES. 

Summary; Traditions — Was the Flood Partial? — Objection as to 
riiglit of Birds — Window or System of Windows ? — Subsidence 
— The Origin of the Rainbow — " Why did God not make Noah 
in the first place? " — The Confusion of Tongues — Probability of 
the Account — Recapitulation. 

This grand catastrophe has exerted a deep moral 
influence upon thejearth's inhabitants, as is indicated 
by the many traditions which have been preserved re 
specting the flood among the nations of antiquity, in 
whose accounts of this great event we have a confirma- 
tion of its reality.* 

It is by no means necessary to suppose a universal 
deluge. Even the language which speaks of all flesh 
as dying (Gen. vii, 21,) may be understood relatively 
with reference to the world as known to the writer, 
which was very much smaller than ours, IngersoU ob- 

iSee Appendix, C. 

(35) 



36 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

jects: " If [the flood] was partial, why did JSToah save 
the birds? An ordinary bird, tending strictly to busi- 
ness, can beat a partial flood." The whole force of 
this objection depends upon facts which have not yet 
been determined by observation. Although almost 
all birds are migratory, with the exception, of course, 
of .certain fowls, yet it is by no means certain that their 
migration is dependent upon changes in the weather. 
Prof. Newton, of Cambridge, England, says:^ "As a 
rule, it would seem as though birds were not depend- 
ent on the weather to any great degree. Occasionally 
the return of the Swallow or the Ni£:htina;ale mav be 
somewhat delayed, but most sea-fowls may be trusted, 
it is said, as the almanac itself. Were they satellites 
revolving around this earth, their arrival could hardly 
be more surely calculated by an astronomer. Foul 
weather or fair, heat or cold, the Puffins repair to some 
of their stations punctually on a given day, as if their 
movements were regulated by clock-work." !N^ow who 
-shall say, in view of the above statements, the torrents 
of rain, and the rapid submergence, that the fowl be- 
longing to the district in question, were able to escape? 
The objection that the ark was not sufficient in size 
to accommodate the animals, comes from massing 
together difficulties which do not exist. The ark, 

A Encyclopaedia Britannica, New York, 1878, Vol. Ill, p. 768. 



THE DELUGE AND CONFUSION OF TONGUES. 37 

according to Tiele, contained three and a half millions 
of cubic feet, and deducting nine-tenths of the space 
for provisions, afforded amply sufficient room for seven 
thousand pairs of animals. But if we confine the 
deluge to the valley of the Euphrates, the fauna peculiar 
to that region, of which living representatives were 
preserved, would doubtless be very much less. 

Ingersoll's witticism about the ventilation, is simply 
the result of ignorance. Gesenius understands the 
Hebrew word Zohar (Gen. vi. 16), which does not 
occur elsewhere in the singular, as indicating a system 
of windows, which, according to Knoble and Delitzsch, 
were to be made at a distance of a cubit below the roof. 

Kor are the objections to the amount of rain which 
would be required, valid. We read (Gen. vii. 11) 
that " the fountains of the great deep were broken up, 
and the windows of heaven were opened." The for- 
mer expression, to which Ingersoll does not allude, 
probably denotes a subsidence, which occurring, ac- 
cording to Hugh Miller,^ at the rate of four hundred 
feet a day would bring the mountains of Ararat below 
the level of the deluge. The decadence of the flood 
would be caused by the rising of the tract of country^ 

1 See his interesting theory of the origin of the deluge in The Testimony of 
theEocks, Boston 1870, p. 358. 

2 Compare Ly ell's Principles of Geology, New York, 1876, Vol. II, p. 101. 



38 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

until at last the ark rested on one of the mountains of 
Ararat, not on the highest peak, as Ingersoll, who prob- 
ably knows nothing of Hebrew, supposes. Such a sub- 
mergence, to a limited extent, is not without analogy in 
what may be called the ordinary course of things.' 
"Nor does the narrative in Genesis ix. 18-16, right- 
ly translated, necessarily indicate that the rainbow 
had not existed before God made his covenant with 
l^oah. The passage reads as follows: "And Elo- 
him said, this is the sign of the covenant which 
I am establishing between me and between you, 
and between every living creature that is with 
you unto everlasting generations. My bow have I 
set in the cloud, and it shall become a sign of a 
covenant between me and between the earth. And 
it shall come to pass, when I bring ^ a cloud upon the 
earth, and the bow shall appear in the cloud, that I 
will remember the covenant between me and between 
you," etc. That is, God makes the rainbow, which 
was already in existence, a sign of His covenant with 
I^oah, just as Portia might take a ring from her fin- 
ger and put it on Bassanio's hand, making it hence- 
forth a sign of their mutual troth. 

1 " In June, 1819, the sea flowed in by the eastern mcuth of the Indus, and 
in a few hours converted a tract of land, 2,000 square miles in area, into an 
inland sea, or lagoon." Lyell's Principles of Geology, New York, 1876, Vol. II, 
pp. 99-100. 

2 Literally : " When I cloud a cloud." 



THE DELUGE AND CONFUSION OF TONGUES. 39 

The question " why God did not make Noali in the 
first place, [since] he knew that he would have to 
drown Adam and Eve and all his family," is slightly 
absurd, as Adam had already been dead 726 years 
when the flood came. So long as God has not made 
men machines, but has endowed them with free will, 
it is quite probable that if He had placed ISToah in the 
Garden of Eden, the result would have been substan- 
tially the same as in the case of Adam. We are asked 
why God should want to drown the animals? There 
is no evidence that He did wish to drown them ; but in 
this case as well as since that time, the animals have 
not only suffered from their mutual ferocity, but also 
on account of their contiguity to man. In the same 
connection Mr. In ger soil asks: "Is it possible that 
any one believes that [the confusion of tongues] is the 
reason why we have the variety of languages in the 
world?" I answer, that the account in Genesis does 
not require us to believe that this was the only and 
main reason for the differences which we detect in the 
lanorua^es of earth. The narrative states that the de- 
scendants of Noah were clannish, and that God resolved 
to scatter them, and that he accomplished his purpose 
by confounding their speech. If we admit that there 
is a God, and that He is the moral ruler of the universe, 
I do not see the slightest difficulty in accepting this 



40 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

account as true. 'Nor does our belief in it hinder us 
from holding that manifold other causes have contribu- 
ted to the differences which may exist in the various 
main divisions of human speech. 

It is now time for us to ask ourselves whether the 
objections which Mr. Ingersoll urges against the first 
eleven chapters of Genesis, stripped of their rhetorical 
embellishments, constitute a sufficient reason why we 
should renounce God and the Christian system. 

We have seen that the objections brought against 
the narrative of the creation, in Ingersoll's case, as he 
states them, from a scientific point of view, are beneath 
contempt. They are so full of errors as to disgust 
any scholar. But it maybe said: granted that this is 
so; have there not been objections raised by those 
whom we are bound to respect? I admit it so far as 
they have been urged in a scholarly spirit, but even 
those who consider the account of creation mytliical, 
are not by any means, as a general thing, atheists or 
even deists, although they are inclined to deny the 
reality of miracles. It should, however, be remembered 
that such an eminent Scientist as Prof. Dana, finds 
no essential contradiction between Genesis and Sci- 
ence.^ However correct his views may be, let it not be 

1 " The order of events in the Scripture cosmogony corresponds essentially 
with that which has been given [by Dana]. There was first a void and 



THE DELUGE AND CONFUSION OF TONGUES. 41 

forgotten that the Bible, from the nature of the case, 
could not employ scientific language, nor does it ]3ro- 
fess to teach Science. It will be seen, therefore, that 
the charo^es uro^ed asjainst the narrative in the first two 
chapters of Genesis, are based upon false pre-supposi- 
tions. The arguments wliicli Mr. Ingersoll urges 
against the temptation, the fall, the deluge, and the 
confusion of tongues — have arisen from the virtual 
denial that God exercises a providential care over the 
universe; that He has made men in his own image, 
gifted with the power of choice, and has left them to 
develop a character which involves the happiness or 
misery of themselves, and multitudes with whom they 
may be associated. 

formless earth : this was literally true of the ' heavens and the earth,' if they 
were in the condition of a gaseous fluid. The succession is as follows : 

"(1) Light. 

" (2) The dividing of the waters below from the waters above the earth. 

" (3) The dividing of the land and water dn the earth. 

" (4) Vegetation : which Moses, appreciating the philosophical character- 
istic of the new creation, distinguishing it from previous inorganic sub- 
stances, defines as that ' wliicli has seed in itself.' 

"(5) The sun, moon and stars. 

" (6) The lower animals : those that swarm in the waters, and the creeping 
and flying species of the land. 

" (7) Beasts of prey — (' creeping' here means ' prowling' [?]. 

"(8) Man. 

"In this succession we observe not merely an order of events, like that 
deduced from science: there is a system in the arrangement, and a far- 
reaching prophecy, to which philosophy could not have attained, however 
instructed." Dana, Manual, of Geology, New York, 1876. pp. 678-79. 



CHAPTEEV. 

ISRAEL'S EXODUS AND WANDERINGS. 

Summary: Alleged Clerical Idiocy — Is the Increase of the Israelites 
in Egypt Incredible ? — A Probable Estimate — The Number of 
First-bo n Children — "The Champion Bird-eaters " — "Not a 
Blade of Grass in the Desert of Sinai" — Palmer's Testimony 
— Ebers — Stanley — Palestine, "a Frigfhtful Country " — Causes 
of Desolation — Hornets — The Seven Nations and Israel — The 
Land as Promised — Wild Beasts — Reptiles — Manna — Had the 
Israelites Other Means of Sustenance? — Clothing in the Wild- 
derness — The Holy Anointing Oil — The Adornments of the Tab- 
ernacle — Fruit after the Fourth Year — Aaron's Consecration — 
"The Infinite Prestidigitator." 

I NOW pass to that part of Mr. Ingersoll's address 
which treats of certain things in the Israelitish history 
and laws which he considers inconsistent with the 
theory of the inspiration of the Old Testament, closing 
with a general attack on the Bible. I shall follow the 
order of the objections given in the address, even at 
the risk of seeming desultory and disconnected. 

Col. Ingersoll asks whether " there is a minister in 

(42) 



ISRAEL'S EXODUS AND WANDERINGS. 43 

the city of Cliicago that will certify to his own idi- 
ocy by claiming that [the Israelites] could have in- 
creased to three millions in two hundred and fifteen 
years?" Whether any one may choose to call me an 
idiot or not, I believe that the seventy Israelites who 
were in Egypt, after Jacob's family had all been gath- 
ered thither, increased in four hundred and thirty 
years to two millions of people. You will see that 
Ingersoll, who follows a certain class of interpreters, 
has set the time too low by two hundred and fifteen 
years, since Ex. xii, 40, shows that the period of 
Israel's sojourn in Egypt was twice as long as he has 
given it.^ The passage in Genesis (xv. 13) which 
speaks of four hundred years as the time of the op- 
pression, is merely a round number, which does not 
conflict with the exact period. Then Ingersoll, in set- 
ting the number of the Israelites at three millions, reck- 
ons at least half a million more than Colenso, who, 
while seekinoj to show the inconsistencies of the Penta- 
teuch narratives, tries to be careful in his statements. 
I believe, then, that seventy Israelites increased in four 
hundred and thirty years to two millions :(1) by reason 
of God's blessing, he had promised Abraham that 
his seed should be as the stars;(2) on account of their 

1 " Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, which they sojourned in 
Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years." 



44 INGEBSOLL AND MOSES. 

residence in Egypt. This country is renowned among 
classic writers, and even at the present day, for the 
fruitfulness of its women!* Kiel, in his commentary 
on Ex. xii. 37-41, has clearly shown that forty-one 
persons, counting ten generations, which is perfectly 
legitimate, as according to 1 Chr. vii, 20-27, there 
were from ten to eleven generations ^ between Ephraim 
and Joshua, would yield the number claimed.' If we 
reckon an average of six children to a family in the 
first six generations, and of four children to each fam- 
ily in the next four generations, we should have, on the 
supposition that there were as many boys as girls at 
the time of the Exodus, 478,224 males above twenty 

1 See Appendix D. 

2 The promise as given to Abraham, Gen. xv, 16, that his descendants 
should return iu the fourth generation, may seem to be in contradiction to 
this statement. It must, however, be remembered that the word dor, like 
i-eculum, originally designated a period of a hundred years; but afterwards, 
as human life was abbreviated, it indicated only thirty or forty years. In 
the patriarchal age, when God was speaking with Abraham, it was natural 
tha,t he should use the longer d* signation, and assure him that his descend- 
ants would leave Egypt in the four hundredth year of their bojourn. 

3 Kiel says : " It is not at all necessary to assume that the numbers given in- 
eluded not only the descendants of the seventy souls who went down with 
Jacob, but also those of ' several thousand man-servants and maid-ser 
vants, who accompanied them. For, apart from the fact that we are no 
warranted in concluding, that because Abraham had 318 fighting servants, 
the twelve sons of Jacob had several thousand, and took them with them 
into Egypt ; even if the servants had been received into the religious fellow- 
ship of Israel by circumcision, they cannot have been reckoned among th« 
600,000 who went out, for the simple reason that they are not included ii> 
the seventy souls who went down to Egypt ; and in chapter i, 5, the num. 
bers of those who came out, is placed in unmistakable connection witii 
the number of those who went in." 



ISRAEL'S EXODUS AND WANDERINGS. 45 



years of age, which with 125,326 men from the ninth 
generation, would make 603,550, or the exact number 
as given in Nmn. i, 46. 'Now, who that have heard 
of the large families that were common in this coun- 
try at the beginning of the present century, often 
numberino- from six to twelve children, and who have 
read in Ex. i, 7, that the Israelites " multiplied and 
waxed exceedingly," can feel very much aggrieved if 
Mr. Ingersoll should choose to call them idiots for 
believing the Biblical account? 

In the same connection, it is alleged as equally in- 
credible, that the number of first-born children at the 
time ot the first census should have amounted only to 
22,273, because the women in Israel must have had, 
according to Ingersoll, on an average sixty-eight chil- 
dren apiece. This estimate is founded on an erroneous 
supposition. It seems probable that only those who 
were born after the command was issued to consecrate 
every first-born son, are reckoned. It certainly would 
be difiicult to prove, with our data, that the number 
given is out of proportion. Ingersoll, in speaking of 
the daily births, says: " We know that there must have 
been, among three millions of people, about three 
hundred a day;" and then comes the remarkable state- 
ment that "everv woman had to have a sacrifice of a 
couple of doves, a couple of pigeons, and the priests 



46 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

had to eat those pigeons in the most holy place" (Lev. 
vi:26; vii: 6.); consequently he goes on to show that 
at that time the three priests must have eaten two 
hundred birds apiece a day, and calls them " the 
champion bird eaters of the world." ^ Now what 
does Ingersoll mean by making such an assertion as 
that? There is nothing of the sort in the Bible. If 
we turn to Leviticus xii; 6, 8, we shall find that the 
mother, if wealthy, was to bring a lamb for a burnt 
offering, and a young pigeon or a turtle-dove for a 
sin -offering. If she was poor, she might bring two 
turtle-doves or two young pigeons — the one for a burnt 
offering', the other for a sin-offerinor. The burnt offer- 
ing was consumed entire^ (Lev. i, 9, IT). Hence the 
lamb and one of the turtle-doves or two young pigeons, 
would not fall to the priests, the sin-offerings however 
were to be eaten by them. 

But Dr. Jamieson has correctly shown that this law, 
though enacted in the wilderness, was not enforced 
there, and adds: "It is expressly said in this chapter 
[Lev. xii, 3,] that these sacrifices were not to be offered 

1. According to Colenso (The Pentateuch and hooh of Joshua critically ex- 
amined, London, 1862, Part I, p. 128), whom Ingersoll seems in the main to 
follow, although with a generous increase of his estimates : " The very 
pigeons to be brought as sm-offerings for the birth of children would have 
averaged . . . two hundred and sixty-four a day ; and each priest would 
have had to eat daily, eighty-eight for his own portion ' in the most holy 
place.' " 

2 Compare Speaker's Commentary, New York, 1871, p. 496. 



ISRAEL'S EXODUS AND WANDERINGS. 47 

till after the circumcision of the child; but as it clearly 
appears (Josh, v, 5-7), that the rite of circumcision was 
not observed during the wanderings through the wil- 
derness, there was no occasion for pigeons." ^ 

At this point Ingersoll inquires: "Where were 
these Jews? They were upon the desert of Sinai; and 

Sahara compared to that is a garden 

There was not a blade of grass in the desert of 
Sinai." This assertion, on the kindest possible con- 
struction, betrays an astounding amount of ignorance. 
Prof. E. H. Palmer, of Cambridge University, England, 
who accompanied the ordinance survey of Sinai, says 
of the Bedouins, of whom some 5000 live in the wilder- 
ness: "To call him a 'son of the desert' is a misnomer; 
half the desert owes its existence to him, and many a 
fertile plain from which he has driven its useful and 
industrious inhabitants, becomes in his hands like the 
'South Country,' a parched and barren wilderness.'"* 
But yet in such an inhospitable region. Palmer saw in 
one place more than 150 milch camels feeding.^ He 
often speaks of the signs of former cultivation which 
he found.* Ebers, the famous Egyptologist, who 

^ A Commentary, Critical, Experimental and Practical, on the Old and New 
Testaments, Philadelphia, Vol. I, p. 464. 

2 Palmer, The Desert of the Exodus, New York 1872, p. 241. 
3UDid. p. 274. 

4 Ibid, pp 281,. 285, 286, 291, 293. Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, New York, 
1870, pp. 23-24, says: " The general name by which the Hebrews called 'the 



48 INGERSOLL AND 3I0SES. 

traveled through the country, believes from various 
indications, such as the extensive importation of wood- 
coal into Egypt, which anciently obtained, that at the 
time of the Exodus the country could support exten- 
sive flocks.^ 

Ingersoll raises the question : " Where were these 
people going?" "They were going" he replies, "to 
the Holy Land . . . one-fifth the size of Illinois — 
a frightful country, covered with rocks and desolation. 
There never was an agent in Chicago that would not 
have blushed with shame to have described that land 
as flowing with milk and honey." 

In reply to such a remark as this, I need merely 
mention the great changes w^hich are wrought in 
any country by neglect. The Mormons have trans- 
formed a seemingly very unpromising section into a 
garden. Would it not be possible that their domain 

wilderness,' including always that of Sinai, was ' the pasture.' Bare as 
the surface of the desert is, yet the thin clothing of vegetation, which is 
seldom entirely: withdrawn, especially the aromatic shrubs on the high 
hill sides, furnish suflBcient sustenance for the herds of the six thousand 
Bedouins who constitute the present population of the Peninsula. 

' Along the mountain ledges green, 
The scattered sheep at will may glean 
The desert's spicy stores.' 

" So were they seen following the daughters or the shepherd-slaves of 
Jethro. So they may be seen climbing the rocks, or gathered round the 
pools and springs of the valleys, under the charge of the black-veiled Bed- 
ouin women of the present day." 

1 Darch Gosen zum Sinai, Leipzig 1872, pp. 233,|and compare Appendix E 



ISRAEL'S EXODUS AND WANDERINGS. 49 

should relapse into its primitive unfruitf ulness through 
the effect of war and ages of neglect? 

Whatever the present appearance of the land of 
Canaan may be, its fertility, when the Israelites took 
possession of it, cannot be doubted. Two causes have 
contributed to its barrenness: (1) The destruction of 
the trees, which began in the time of Shishak, 970, B . 
C; and (2) The washing away of the terraces.^ The 
best authorities on Archaeology, such as De Wette^ and 
Keil do not hesitate on the authority of Tacitus, Am- 
mianus Marcellinus, Josephus and others, to accept the 
testimony of the Bible respecting the very great fer- 
tility of the land of Canaan as true.^ Just here 
Ingersoll derides the idea that God should have em- 
ployed hornets to drive out the Canaanites, or that he 
should direct Israel to kill off the seven nations slowly, 
which, according to his arithmetic, in that narrow 
domain amounted to twenty-one millions. While 
there is no reason why God should not employ hor- 
nets to make the residence of the Canaanites un- 
comfortable, still we may, perhaps, interpret the expres- 
sion figuratively, as almost all modern commentators 
are inclined to do, after the analogy of the Greek word 

1 Cf. W. H. and H. B. Tristram, in Smith's Dictionaiy of the Bible, New 
York. 1870, Vol. Ill, p. 2294. 

2 Lekrbuch der hebrdisch-judischen archseologie, Leipzig, 1864, p. 113. 

» See Appendix, F. 
4 



50 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

oistros, which signifies both a gad-fly and (fury) 
madness.^ I prefer, however, to consider them as 
literal hornets.'* 

The objection that it would not be necessary 
to kill off the nations gradually, because they with the 
Israelites would make a population of twenty-four mil- 
lions for a land containing only twelve thousand square 
miles, rests upon an utterly false assumption. (1) 
The number of the Israelites was nearer two than 
three millions. (2) Although it is said that the seven 
nations were greater and mightier than Israel, we have 
no right, as Knoble, who is a great authority in such 
matters, has indicated, to suppose that each nation 
was larger than Israel, but simply that all of them to- 
gether liad the advantage of their invaders. (3) The 
land, as originally promised (Gen. xv, 18) contained 
much more than twelve thousand square miles, and 
being covered with immense forests, and surrounded 
by extensive deserts, there would be especial danger 
of wild beasts, from which the country in the most 
prosperous times was never free. Dr. Porter, who 

1 Thus the wretched lo is represented in Prometheus Bound, 1. 566-67, as 

shrieking: 

"Oh! OhI 

Again the gad-fly stings me miserable," 

while the angur Tiresias, in Sophocles' Antigone, 1, 1001-2, says; 

" An unknown sound of birds I hear 

Screaming with wild, unwonted /wr?/." 

2 See the learned dissertation in Bocharti Hierozoicon, Lipsiae, 1796. Vol. 
iii. pp. 402, etc. 



ISRAEL'S EXODUS AND WANDERINGS. 51 

lived for several years in the East, says: ^'Tlie popu- 
lation of that country [Palestine] at the present mo- 
ment is about two millions, or about equal to the 
number of the Israelites at the Exodus; and lean tes- 
tify that more than three-fourths of the richest and 
the best of the country lies €omj)letely desolate.^^ ^ Dr. 
McCaul has put the case very well w^hen he says: 
^' God promises not to drive out the Canaanites in 
one year for two reasons; first, lest the land should 
be desolate; and, second, lest the beasts of the field 
should multiply against them. ]^ow if the whole 
population of Canaan had been destroyed in one 
year, which implies continual fighting, disorder, 
and neglect of agricultural pursuits, was there not a 
danger that the following year there would be no crops? 
In such a state of things, in a country like Canaan, 
when there were wild beasts in the land,^ and abundance 
in the neighborhood — when the fields, and roads, and 
cities would all be full of the corpses of slain and un- 

iSee The Athenseum, London, Jan. 3d, 1863, p. 20. Dr. Porter's letter, from 
which the quotation is taken, furnishes to my mind a complete refutation 
of three of Colenso's objections to the hisiorical character of the Pentateuch. 

'■i Thompson, in The Land and the BoiTc, New York, 1865, who was for twen- 
ty five years a missionary in Syria and Palestine, speaking of Samson meet- 
ing a lion on the way to Timnath, says, vol. ii, p. 361, that was ' just where 
one would expect to find a lion in those days, when wild beasts were far 
more c mmon than at present. Nor is it more remarkable that lions should 
be met with in such places than that fierce leopards should now maintain 
their position in the thickly settled parts of Lebanon, and even in these 
very mountains, within a few hundred rods of large villages. Yet such I 
know is the fact." Compare Dr. Porter's remarks in TJie Athenssum, Ibid. 



52 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

buried Canaanites — there would be the greatest possi- 
ble danger of the wild beasts multiplying against the 
new comers, and even disputing possession with them. 
Even in France, with its immense population, wolves 
increased during the revolutionary troubles and con- 
fusion, from 1793 on, to such a degree as to cause se- 
rious alarm, and high rewards were offered by the Na- 
tional Convention for their destruction. In 1797, no 
less than 5,351 wolves were destroyed, and the alarm 
had not subsided in the year 1800." It seems to me 
that these facts show the utter fallacy of Mr. Inger- 
soU's objection. 

His profane remark about God's going into partner- 
ship with snakes, fails to recognize the fact that every- 
thing is subject to God, and that he can even employ 
reptiles to perform his will. In the same breath that 
Ingersoll speaks of serpents, he says that " the child- 
ren of Israel lived on manna — one account says all the 
time, and another only a little while." I must confess 
that in looking at Ex. xvi, 14-36 ; Num. xi, 7-9 ; Deut. 
viii, 3-16; Josh, v, 12, I have failed to find any such 
disagreement as he indicates. As to the peculiarities 
of the manna, they must be assigned to that miracu- 
lous power by which it was provided. Undoubtedly 
the food became monotonous and wearisome, still we 
have no right to assume that this was their only means 



ISRAEL'S EXODUS AND WANDERINGS. 53 

of sustenance. Ebers holds that they undoubtedly 
enjoyed the milk from their flocks, that they slaugh- 
tered their cattle and sheep, and that they obtained 
fish, which are found in great abundance in the neigh- 
boring sea/ Their diet could not have been as poor 
as that of the Turks in the late war. When Ingersoll 
says they knew that God could just as well give them 
three good meals a day, he overlooks the fact that the 
long period of Israel's wandering was one of chastise- 
ment (Deut. viii. 2-3, 16), and that all his dealings with 
tliem were designed to break their rebellious spirits. 
The sickly sentimentality which fits up handsome cells 
for prisoners, feeds them bountifully, and lets them off 
easily when they shoot down our citizens, was not known 
under the theocracy. God made short and quick work 
with rebellion and mutiny, as was absolutely necessary 
in dealing with a multitude of people, one generation 
of w^hich knew that they could never leave the wilder- 
ness. (N^um. xxxii. 11-12.) Ingersoll follows the 
rabbinical interpretation when he supposes that the 
clothes grew with the children, but Deut. viii. 4, indi- 
cates nothing of the kind : " Thy raiment waxed not 
old upon thee, neither did thy foot swell these forty 
years." We must remember that the garments worn 
by the Orientals are flowing, so that they were likely 

1 Compare Appendix E. 



5^ INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

to be much more durable tliaii ours. Besides, the chil- 
dren were doubtless as destitute of clothing as those 
of the present denizens of the wilderness, of which 
Palmer says: "They are for the most part without 
clothing of any kind.'' * Then it must not be forgot- 
ten that this miraculous providence of God does not 
exclude a good supply of clothes to begin with (Ex. 
iii, 22 ; xii, 35), and materials derived from their flocks 
and herds, as well as from the caravans which were 
often passing tliem. 

The question is now put : " Do you believe the real 
God — if there be one — ever killed a man for making 
hair oil ? " It is perhaps no wonder that one who is 
so profane in all his thoughts and expressions, should 
not be able to see why God should prohibit the com- 
mon use of the holy anointing oil, which was a sym- 
bol of the unction of the Divine Spirit; and of the 
incense, which symbolized prayer, under pain of 
death. Nor can such a man appreciate why Gcd 
gave directions as to the building of the tabernacle, 
and the attire of the priests, although none of these 
details Avcre without spiritual significance. There is 
no reason why God should not tell Moses to have 
curtains made of fine linen, nor why gold, silver, and 
precious stones should not be employed in making 

1 " The Desert of the Exodus, New Yort, 1872, p. 79. 



ISRAEL'S EXODUS AND WANDERINGS. 55 

the vessels of tlie tabernacle and the ephod of the 
high priest. Why should IngersoU say : ^' Did he 
tell them to make things of gold, silver and precious 
stones, when they did not have them ? " It is express- 
ly stated that every Israelitish woman borrowed of 
her Egyptian neighbor, jewels of silver, and jewels of 
gold, and raiment (Ex. iii, 22; xi, 2; xii, 35.), not to 
speak of treasures which probably had been handed 
down, especially in the princely family of Joseph, as 
heirlooms. In regard to Ingersoll's query: "Is it 
possible that God told them not to eat any fruit until 
after the fourth year of planting the trees?" Micha- 
elis' remark is a sufficient answer;^ " The wisdom of 
this law is very striking. Every gardener will teach 
us not to let fruit-trees bear in their earliest years, 
but to pluck oif the blossoms; and for this reason 
they will thus thrive the better and bear more abun- 
dantly afterwards." 

IngersoU ridicules the ceremony employed at the 
consecration of Aaron and his sons, when they laid 
their hands upon the head of a ram, and Moses slew 
it, and took of its blood and put it upon the tip of 
Aaron's right ear, and upon the thumb of his right 
hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot. (Lev. 
viii, 22.) Our scoffer suggests that we could not keep 

^Das Mosa sche llecht, Frankfort, A. M. 1778, Part iv. p. 349, 



56 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

our faces straight in witnessing sucli a ceremony. 
That would depend upon the ideas which we associated 
with it. Tlie celebration of the Lord's Supper, which 
often moves a devout communicant to tears on account 
of what it signifies, might merely furnish food for a 
scoffer's mirth. I have no doubt that this consecra- 
tion performed bj Moses (who had acquired all the 
grace and dignity of an Egyptian court) upon his ven- 
erable brother, was one of great solemnity. The sym- 
bolism is certainly beautiful, as indicated by Lange, 
when he says : " Obedience, as spiritual hearing, is 
the first duty, especially of the priests. ISText the hand, 
as symbolizing human activity, is specially consecra- 
ted by being sprinkled with blood; finally, the great 
toe of the right foot, as symbolizing the walk of life 
in general." 

Ingersoll, after speaking of God as a juggler, in his 
turning Moses' rod into a serpent, asks: "Is it possi- 
ble that God worked miracles to convince Pharaoh 
that slavery was wrong?" I answer no; for Pharaoh 
was not open to any such conviction. Hence Inger- 
soll's query: " Why did he not tell Pharaoh that any 
nation founded on slavery could not stand?" — which 
he ends with a rhetorical flourish — is, in view of the 
circumstances, ridiculous. Pharaoh would have said, 
" I do not believe you ; give me a sign." (Ex. vii, 9.) 



ISRAEL'S EXODUS AND WANDERINGS. 57 

This was the demand which he did make, and which 
the Jews made when Christ stopped the traffic in the 
temple. " What sign," they say, " showest thou unto ns, 
seeing that thou doest these things? " (John ii, 18 cf. 
vi. 30.) The words of Moses and Aaron could have 
no effect upon Pharaoh unless power lay behind them. 
The miracle which God performed in changing Moses' 
rod into a serpent, which devoured the serpents of the 
Egyptian charmers, was level to Pharaoh's comprehen- 
sion, and tended to establish the claims of Moses and 
Aaron. 



CHAPTEE VI. 

ISRAEL'S CUSTOMS AND LAWS. 

Summary: Slavery — Divorce — The Position of Woman — God's 
Victory over the Egyptians — The size of the Egyptian Stand- 
ing Army in the time of Moses — The Hare — Ingersoll's Theory 
as to the Origin of the Ten Commandments — Influence of the 
second Commandment on Art — Did God teach and uphold Po- 
lygamy? — Was the Extermination of the Canaanites Justifia- 
ble? — The Husband of an Idolatrous Wife — Captive Maidens — 
1'he Midianitish Women — Quotation from Philo —Unjust repre- 
sentations as to Israelitish Slavery — Two kinds of Servitude — 
Limitations — The Slave-wife — Foreign Slaves — Alleged Abuses 
— Comparison between Israelitish and Roman Slavery — Mom- 
msen's Remark. 

The charge that God did not use such arguments as 
Ingersoll recommends, because "he believed in the 
infamy of slavery," is either an infamous falsehood or 
an infamous mistake. All God's commands are with 
reference to the mitigation of an institution which has 
existed from the hoariest antiquity. We shall have 
occasion to speak of this matter again. 

^Neither can God be charged as the author of divorce. 

(58) 



ISRAEL'S CUSTOMS AND LAWS. 59 

This very clearly appears from what Christ said to the 
Jews when they asked, Matt, xix, 3 : "Is it lawf al for 
a man to put away his wife for every cause?" He 
tells them: "Have ye not read, that he which made 
them at the beginning made them male and female, 
and said, for this cause shall a man leave father and 
mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they twain 
shall be one flesh? What therefore God hath joined 
together let not man put asunder." And when they 
asked why Moses commanded to give a writing of 
divorcement and put her away, he said: "Moses, be- 
cause of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to 
put away your wives, but from the beginning it was 
not so." It is an infamous calumny when Mr. Inger- 
soll says that [woman] was never worth mentioning 
[in the Bible]. Why then do we read so much about 
her that is tender and appreciative? How is it that 
Sarah, Eebecca, Eachel, Miriam, Deborah, Ruth, and 
Abigail have become household words? How is it 
tliat the bridegroom is not to go to war, nor to be 
charged with any business, but is to be free at home 
for a year that he may cheer his wife? (Deut. xxiv. 5.) 
How is it that we read, Prov. xviii. 22 : " Whoso findeth 
a wife, findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favor of 
the Lord?" and at the verj close of the book, how is it 
that we find that eulogy on a virtuous woman, which, 



60 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

as Delitzsch says, praises her throughout the twenty- 
two letters of the alphabet ? Sharae on the man who 
claims to have read the Bible through once this year 
and yet affirms that " There is not one word about 
woman in the Old Testament except the word of 
shame and humiliation." 

Ingersoll blasphemously says: "After God had 
killed all the first-born in Egypt, .... it could 
raise an army that could put to flight six hundred 
thousand men; and because this God overwhelmed the 
Egyptian army, he bragged about it for a thousand 
years, repeatedly calling the attention of the Jews to 
the fact that he overthrew Pharoah and his hosts. 
Did he help much with their six hundred thousand 
men? We find by the records of the day that the 
Egyptian standing army was at that time never more 
than one hundred thousand men." 

But where are the passages, in which God boasts 
of his victory over the Egyptians? The Israelites 
were fond of celebrating this great deliverance in song 
and story. Just in sight of that grand catastrophe 
they sing (Ex. xv, 11): "Who is like unto thee, O 
Lord, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in 
holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders." But such 
recognitions of God's power came from the popular 
heart. I ask, by what records of the day " we find 



ISRAEL'S CUSTOMS AND LAWS, 61 

that the Egyptian standing army, at the time of the Ex- 
odus, was never more than one hundred thousand men ?" 
According to Diodorus Siculus,' Sesostris, or Eamses 
II, during whose reign Moses was born,'^ had an army of 
600,000 foot, 24,000 horse, and 27,000 chariots. After 
much earnest search in the latest and best authorities, 
I think there can be no doubt that In ger soil's state- 
ment is without any good foundation.^ Aside from 
this, however, it was not God's purpose to use an arm 
of flesh in overcoming the Egyptians ; for the Israelites 
were to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord 
(Ex. xiv. 13). 

Ingersoll next speaks of certain matters in which 
the Bible is not inspired, as for instance, in natural 
history, and mentions the hare and rabbit as animals 
which are said to chew the cud but do not. "Now when 
we remember that the object of the Jewish law was 

11,54. 

2 See Appendix, G. 

3 In the Records of the Past, London, Vol. ii. p. 70, Ramses TI. is represented 
by the third Sallier papyrus as saying : " I am amid multitudes unknown, 
nations gathered against me ; I am alone, no other with me ; my foot and 
horse have left me ; I called aloud to them, none of them heard ; I cried 
to them. I find Ammon worth more than millions of soldiers, than one 
hundred thousand cavalry, than ten thousand brothers, striplings [Brugsch, 
'and sons' J, were they all gathered together in one." Compare Brugsch 
p. 505. 

It does not appear from this quotation, that the " Egyptian standing army 
was never more than one hundred thousand men ;" But even if Pharaoh 
had led only a few thousand troops against the Israelites, as was probably 
the case, they would have been amply sufficient to strike terror into those 
who had but just escaped from bondage. 



62 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

simply to prohibit the use of these animals and that 
it indicates them by the tremulous motion of the 
mouth, which the ancients supposed was caused by 
chewing the cud, we certainly find no reason for im- 
pugning God's word.* 

IngersoU claims that the Bible is not inspired in re- 
spect to its law, because men object to having their 
goods stolen and to being murdered. But does that 
account for all the ten commandments, which are 

1 Wood, Bfble Animals, London, 1869,j>. 315, says: " It has been mentioned 
that the Hyrax, a true pachyderm, does not merely chew the cud, but that 
the peculiar and constant movement of its jaws strongly resemble the act 
of rumination. The Jews, ignorant as thev were of scientific zoology, 
would naturally set down the Hyrax as a ruminant, and would have been 
likely to eat it, as the flesh is very good. It must be remembered, that two 
conditions were needful to render an animal fit to be eaten by a Jew, the one, 
that it must be a ruminant, and the second, that it should have a divided 
hoof. Granting, therefore, the presence of the former qualification, Moses 
points out the absence of the latter, thereby prohibiting the animal as efl'ec- 
tually as if he had entered into a question of comparative anatomy, and 
proved that the Hyrax was incapable of rumination. 

Dr. Gardiner has also put the matter very well in his excellent article en- 
titled Errors of the Scriptures, in The Bibliotheca Sacra, Andover, July, 1879, 
Vol. XXXVI, p. 503, when he says : " Moses speaks of the coney (Hyrax 
Syriacus) as unclean, although he chews the cud. because he does not divide 

the hoof (Lev. xi. 5), and so of some other animals All this is wrong. 

The coney does not really chew the cud, but merely has a way of moving 

his lower jaw which gives him the appearance of doing so Now was 

this an error on the part of Moses, and is it an error of the Bible ? Techni- 
cally and superficially, of course it is, but not really. Moses himself may 
very likely have been but an indifferent comparative anatomist ; but this 
cannot be determined simply from this use of language. He was giving a 
law for popular observance, and must necessarily mark his distinctions ac- 
cording to appearances, or expose the people to be continually involved in 
transgression. It is of no consequence at all what was the extent or defi- 
ciency of his own private information. The exigencies of the time and 
the circumstances required that the law should be expressed as it is, and 
it would have failed of its purpose had it been set forth in the techni- 
calities of modern science." 



ISRAEL'S CUSTOMS AND LAWS. 63 

founded on perfect love to God and onr neighbor? 
Matt. xxii. 37-40. He affirms that the second com- 
mandment was the death of art in Palestine. That, 
however, is not the fanlt of the commandment, for 
rightly understood it does not discourage art. Under 
the Mosaic dispensation the cherubim (Ex. xxxvii. 
7-9), the brazen serpent (E'um. xxi. 9), etc., were 
prepared. And we find similar works of art on a 
grander scale in the temple(lK. vi. 23-29; vii. 23-37), 
and palace (x. 18-20) of Solomon. The command- 
ment was not directed against the making of images, 
but against making them as objects of worship. 

Ingersoll further affirms that the Bible is not in- 
spired in respect to morals. After putting the question : 
" Is there a man, is there a woman here who believes 
in the institution of polygamy? and anticipating 
their reply "no, we do not," he says: "Then you are 
better than your God was four thousand years ago. 
Four thousand years ago he believed in it, taught it 
and upheld it." Where, I ask, does he teach it? 
.Does Moses say like Mohammed, that a man may take 
two, three, or even four wives ? ' J^o. There are only 
six verses in regard to the subject. According to 
Exodus xxi, 9, 10, it is said that if a father take another 
wife for his son in addition to the maid-servant whom 

1 Sura IV. 



64 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

he has betrothed to him, he is not to diminish the 
rights of the latter. In Lev. xviii, 18, it is prohibit- 
ed that a man should take his wife's sister during her 
life-time. In Deut. xxi, 15-17 we read: "If a man 
have two wives, one beloved and another hated, and 
they have borne him children, both the beloved and 
the hated (or less beloved) ; and if the first-born son 
be hers that was hated, then it shall be, when he 
maketh his sons to inherit that which he hath, that he 
may not make the son of the beloved first-born before 
the son of the hated,which is indeed the first-born," that 
is we have the right of primogeniture established 
among the Hebrews. Is there proof in those six verses 
that God believed in polygamy, taught and upheld 
it?^ But you may say are not the historical examples 
of polygamy favorable to it? ITot at all. The Sacred 
historian shows the shadows and unhappiness result- 
ing from having a plurality of wives. On the other 
hand, pictures of domestic bliss are only portrayed as 
connected with one wife (Ps. cxxviii, 3; Pro v. v, 18; 
xviii, 22; xix, 14; xxxi, 30; Eccl ix, 9.) 

Ingersoll says he thinks the Bible is neither inspired 
about religious liberty, nor about war. I connect the 
two charges, since the same principle underlies them 
both. The Israelites were commanded to wage a war 

iSee Appendix!, . 



ISRAEL'S CUSTOMS AND LAWS. 65 

of extermination against tlie Canaanites. In their 
dealings witli other nations they were directed to spare 
the virgins and the female children, l^ow remember 
that this command occurs in the Old Testament in 
regard to people who were so abominably filthy in 
their practices that the Scripture says the land was 
vomiting them out (Lev. xviii, 26, 27). If the Jews 
had spared these nations as the IN'ormans spared the 
Saxons, they would certainly have fallen into these 
gross sins. Even Oort says:^ "The best of the 
Israelites felt an aversion for the tribes they had con- 
quered and oppressed, which was not simply the result 
of national pride and selfishness, but was based upon 
a deep moral sense." 

When Ingersoll speaks of the cruelty of a man turn- 
ing against the wife of his bosom, because she wished 
to incite him to idolatry, he fails to recognize that 
under the divine government, love and obedience to 
God are to be preferred when they conflict with con- 
jugal aifection . It was better that a man's heart should 
be torn with anguish by the loss of his wife than that 
he should deny the God who had made him. 

And now we come to the most horrible passage in 
Ingersoll's address, in which he shamefully misrepre- 

1 The Bible for Learners, Boston, 1878, vol. ii, p. 93. 
5 



6Q INGEBSOLL AND MOSES. 

sents the Jewish law in regard to captive maidens, in- 
terpreting it doubtless in the light of Sepoj and Turk- 
ish enormities. It is here that he counsels a woman 
when she comes to this passage, to throw the book 
from her in contempt and scorn. It is here that he 
says;" That is the God we teach our children about, so 
that they will be sweet and tender, amiable and 
kind! That monster — that fiend!" May God forgive 
IngersolPs blasphemy! 

]^ow, what are the facts in the case? Moses reproves 
the Israelites for saving the Midianitish women alive, 
w^ho had caused them to commit fornication in prac- 
ticing the licentious rites of Baal-peor (l^um. xxv, 1-3.) 
He therefore bids them kill all except the virgins and 
the little girls.^ This historical instance illustrates the 
practice of the Israelites. The statutes in regard to the 
matter are found in Deuteronomy, xx, 14, where we 
read that if a city refuses to make peace with the 

1 If the Israelites had pursued any other course, they would have spared 
the very women who, as priestesses, in the obscene worship of Baal-peor 
had not only led them to commit carnal but also spiritual fornication, and 
had thus brought down upon the children of Israel terrible judgments 
(Num. xxv, 9). Had they spared the male children, they would not merely 
have preserved the germs of the Midianitish nation among them, but they 
would have incurred the actual danger that those same children on reach- 
ing their majority might have been their most dangerous enemies by seek- 
ing, in accordance with the ancient custom, to become avengers of blood. 
On this latter point, compare Knoble, Die Biicher Numeri, Deuteronnmium 
und Josua, Leipzig, 1861, p. 170, and Jamieson's very full discussion on Num. 
xxxi, 48-54, in A Commentary, Critical, Experimental and Pracl cat, &e., Phila- 
delphia. 



ISRAEL'S CUSTOMS AND LAWS. C7 

Israelites, then they " shall smite every male there- 
of with the edge of the sword. But the women, 
and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that 
is in the city " they shall take nnto themselves. As 
to the treatment of captive women, Deuteronomy, 
xxi, 10-14, directs that if an Israelite sees among the 
captives a beautiful woman whom he would have as 
his wife, he is to allow her to mourn a month for her 
parents before he consummates the marriage. If 
afterwards he should not be pleased with her, he may 
not sell her, but must grant her liberty. I trust that 
the base insinuations which IngersoU has made as to 
the treatment of these captives, will furnish a sufii- 
cient apology for giving Philo's construction of this 
passage in his chapter on Humanity, where at the 
fourteenth section, he expresses himself as fo lows: ^ 
" Moreover, if after having taken prisoners in a sally, 
you should entertain a desire for a beautiful woman 
amongst them, do not satiate your passion, treating 
her as a captive, but act with gentleness, and pity her 
change of fortune, and alleviate her calamity, regula- 
ting everything for the best." He further remarks 
that " the lawgiver has given all his laws with great 
beauty. For, in the first place, he hath not allowed 
appetite to proceed onwards in its unbridled course, 

1 Ed. Mangey, ii, 393, seq. 



68 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

with stiff-necked obstinacy, but lie has checked its ve- 
hement impetuosity, compelling it to rest for thirty 
days. And in the second place, he has tested love, 
trying whether it is a frantic passion, easily satisfied, 
and, in fact, wholly originating in desire, or whether 
it has any share in that most pure essence of well- 
tempered reason, for reason will bridle the desire, not 
allowing it to proceed to any acts of insolence, but 
compelling it to abide the appointed period of a 
month of -probation. And, in the third place, he 
shows his compassion for the captive, if she is a 
virgin, because it is not her parents who are now 
giving her in marriage, arranging for a most de- 
sirable connection." The subject is one of such 
delicacy that I cannot quote facts which would 
go to show that the Jewish regulation in regard 
to maidens taken in war is far in advance of practices 
which have obtained among some modern nations, not 
to mention those of antiquity. In view of these facts, 
are not IngersoU's strictures on the Old Testament in 
regard to maidens, disgraceful? 

Equally unjust and impious are his representations 
in regard to slavery among the Israelites. There is a 
passage which may seem to be favorable to his view. 
In Lev. XXV, 45, we read: " Moreover of the children 
of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them 



ISRAEL'S CUSTOMS AND LAWS. 69 

shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, 
which they beget in the land, and they shall be your 
possession." But when we examine all the passages 
which relate to this subject, we see that they tend to 
mitigate an institution which seems almost to have 
been a necessity of that civilization.* The servitude 
among the Hebrews was of two kinds: (1) That of 
Israelites, which is mentioned in Lev. xxv, 39 : 
" And if th}^ brother that dwelleth by thee be 
waxen poor, and be sold unto thee, thou shalb 
not compel him to serve as a bond-servant. But 
as a hired servant, and as a sojourner he shall 
go with thee, and shall serve tliee unto the year 
of jubilee, and then shall he depart from thee, both, 
he and his children with him, and shall return 
unto his own family, and unto the possession of his 
fathers shall he return." Both in Exodus and Deuter- 
onomy it is said that the servant is to be free at the 

1 Rev. W. L. Bevan, in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, New York, 1S70, Vol. 
iv, p. S057, says : " Repugnant as the notion of slavery is to our minds, it 
is difl&cult to see how it can be dispensed with in certain phases of society, 
without, at all events, entailing severer evils than those which it produces. 
.... In the case of war, carried on for conquest or revenge, there were but 
two modes of dealing with captives, namely, putting them to death or re- 
ducing them to slavery. The same may be said in regard to such acts and 
outrages as disqualified a person for the society of his fellow-citizens. 
Again, as citizenship involved the condition of freedom and independence, 
it was almost necessary to offer the alternative of disfranchisement to all 
who, through poverty or any other contingency, were unable to support 
themselves in independence. In all these cases, slavery was the mildest 
of the alternatives that ofi'ered, and may hence be regarded as a blessing 
rather than a curse." 



70 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

end of every six years (Ex. xxi:2; Deut. xv: 12.) un- 
less lie has obtained his freedom, by the year of jubi- 
lee intervening. And when his master lets him depart 
he is to furnisli him liberally from his flock, and from 
his harvest so that he may be in position to lead an 
independent existence (Deut. xv: 13-15). In connec- 
tion with this servitude, the master could give his 
Israeli tish slave a wife from among his servants. If 
he accepted her, she and her children belonged to her 
master. If the servant, moved by affection, should 
say: "I love my master, my wife, and my children; I 
will not go free," then he was to remain a slave for 
life (Ex. xxi: 5-6). With respect to this regulation 
Ingersoll asks: ^' Do you believe that God ever turned 
the dimpled cheeks of little children into iron chains 
to hold a man in slavery? Do you knovv that a God 
like that would not make a respectable devil?" 

I have merely this to say, that the Israelitish ser- 
vant was not compelled to take a slave-wife. On the 
other hand, the law plainly stated what the result of 
such a step would be. If, therefore, he accepted such 
a partner, he did so with his eyes open. It might be 
an unfortunate match, as many are that young women 
make when they marry their father's coachmen, but he 
would have only himself to blame for it. 

(2.) Another kind of slavery was that of those who 



ISRAEL'S CUSTOMS AND LAWS. 71 

were foreigners. But as the writer of an article in 
Smith's Bihle Dictionary remarks, the general treat- 
ment of slaves appears to have been gentle' — occa- 
sionally too gentle, as we infer from Solomon's warn- 
ing (Prov. xxix, 21): "He that delicately bringeth up 
his servant from a child shall have him become his son 
at length." Minor personal injuries were recompensed 
by giving the slave his freedom. With reference to 
the assumption that a master might abuse his slave as 
much as he pleased, even unto death, because he was 
his property, the objection is well met by Prof. Bar- 
rows, who says:^ *' There is no ground for supposing 
that the murder of a slave with a deadly weapon, or 
the destruction of his life in any other way, in such 
circumstances as afforded proof of an intention to kill, 
was not punished with death. If the servant survived 
a day or two, the master was not to be punished. The 
reason added is, ' for he is his money.' The meaning 
of these words is not that the master is to escape pun- 
ishment because the servant, whose death he has 
caused, was an article of property, for the destruction 
of which, punishment was not required (which would 
be in direct contradiction to the context); but rather 
that, being worth money to his master, it is to be pre- 

"^ Slave, Vol. IV, p. 30G9. 

^Bibliotheca Sa ra, Andover, 1862, Vol. XIX p. 583. 



72 INGERSOLL AND MGSES. 

Slimed, in the absence of express evidence to the con- 
trary, that there was no intention of killing him, while 
he suffers a penalty to a certain extent in the loss of 
the servant." 

The kind spirit of the Jewish law towards all ser- 
vants is manifested in the command that they shall 
not do any work on the Sabbath, and in the reminder 
that the Israelites themselves were once servants in 
Egypt (Dent, v, 15), this fact is also called to their 
remembrance when they are required to admit their 
slaves to Israel's stated occasions of festivity and re- 
joicing throughout the year (Deut. xvi, 12). 

It has been abundantly proved in the light of such 
facts that the system of Hebrew bondage was much 
kinder than that of American slavery, regarding which, 
Mommsen has made the following remark: " It is 
easily possible, that, compared with Roman slavery ^ 
the sum of all Negro sufferings is a drop." Let it be 
remembered that we now have to do with the Old 
Testament; the principles of the 'New, fairly inter- 
preted, strike at the very foundations of slavery.' 

i Romische GescMchte, Berlin, 1874, Vol. II, p. 77. While the above state- 
ment may be too strong, the facts given in Appendix J show the surpas- 
singly brutal nature of Koman slavery. 

See Appendix H. 



CHAPTEE VII. 

VARIOUS MISSTATEMENTS BY INGERSOLL. 

Summary: The Atonement Saves the Wrong- Man — Chang-es in 
the Text of Scripture — Disag-reement of the Jews as to the 
Limits of the Canon — Greek Translation Prepared Two or Three 
Years B. C. — Henry VIII. and Elizabeth Interested in the 
Translation of the Bible — Our Indebtedness to Murderers for 
our Bibles and Creeds — Constantine the Great the Murderer of 
his Wife — One Hundred Thousand Errors in the Old Testa- 
ment — No Contemporaneous Literature at the Time the Bible 
was Composed — The Bible the Occasion of Dungeons, Racks, 
etc. — The Selfishness of the Christian's Heaven — A Book Con- 
taining the Story of Elisha and the Bears Cannot be true — 
Answers to the above, and Conclusion. 

Among Ingersoll's many misstatements, none is 
greater than when he says that the atonement saves 
the wrong man. According to the Scriptures, every 
living soul needs the atonement. In God's sight 
''there is none righteous, no not one" (Rom. iii, 10). 
No one, however lovely traits of character he may pos- 
sess, can save himself (Rom. iii, 20). But this right- 
eousness of Christ, which every soul may receive 

(73) 



74 INGEESOLL AND 3I0SES. 

through repentance and faith, is not favorable to anti- 
nomianism. Paul indignantly repels that heresy when 
he says (Rom. vi, 1-2) : " Shall we continue in sin 
that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, 
that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? " Hence 
according to the Christian scheme, there can be no jus- 
tification, unless it is attended by sanctification. 

What Ingersoll says about the changes which took 
place in the text of the Scriptures before the Bible w^as 
printed, is ignorant nonsense. Scrivener remarks;^ 
" But even were the progress of the science [of textual 
criticism] less hopeful than we believe it to be, one 
great truth is admitted on all hands — the almost com- 
plete freedom of Holy Scripture from the bare sus- 
picion of willful corruption ; the absolute identity of 
the testimony of every known copy in respect to doc- 
trine and spirit, and the main drift of every argument 
and every narrative through the entire volume of in- 
spiration. On a point of such vital moment, I am glad 
to cite the well-known and powerful statement of the 
great Bentley, at once the profoundest and the most 
daring of English critics: " The real text of the sacred 
writers does not now (since the originals have been so 
long lost) lie in any manuscript or edition, but is dis- 
persed in them all. 'Tis comj)etently exact, indeed, 

1 A Plain Introduction to The Criticism of the New Testament, Cambridge, 
1874, pp. 6-7. 



VARIOUS MISSTATEMENTS BY INGEBSOLL. 75 

in the worst manuscript now extant; nor is one article 
of faith or moral precept either perverted or lost in 
them; choose as awkwardly as you will, choose the 
worst by design out of the whole lump of readings; 
. . . . make your thirty thousand variations as 
many more, if numbers of copies can ever reach that 
sum : all the better to a knowing and a serious reader, 
who is thereby more richly furnished to select what 
he sees genuine. But even put them into the hands 
of a knave or a fool, and yet with the most sinistrous 
and absurd choice, he shall not extinguish the light 
of any one chapter, nor so disguise Christianity, but 
that every feature of it will still be the same." 

Ingersoll said to his auditors, who perhaps won- 
dered at his learning: ''I w^ant yon to know that the 
Jews themselves never agreed as to what books were 
inspired, and that there were a lot of books written 
that were not incorporated in the Old Testament." 
We have in the Prologue of the book of Sirach, writ- 
ten one hundred and thirty-two years ^ before Christ, 
an allusion to the three great divisions of the Old 
Testament, which are termed the Law, the Prophets, 
and the Sacred Writings. 

There can be but little doubt, although there is 
not data enough to argue with certainty,^ that these 

1 FrUzsche, Libri Apochryphi Veteris Testamenti Grsece, Lipsise, 1871, p. xxii. 
SFurst, Der Kanon des AUen Testaments, Leipzig, 1868, p. C5, (56) has made a 



76 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

three divisions contained the thirty-nine books which 
are enumerated by the Jews as twenty-two, and are 
mentioned by Josephus in a famous passage:* "For 
we have not an innumerable multitude of books 
among us, disagreeing from, and contradicting one 
another, but only twenty-two books." The same 
number of books is mentioned in a celebrated passage 
of a treatise in the Talmud, called J3aha hathraJ^ 
Jerome, who had a Jewish teacher, also mentions that 
there were twenty-two books, or twenty -four reckoned 
by the Jews in the Old Testament,^ according as Euth 
and Lamentations, were numbered separately, or added 
to Judges and Jeremiah. "With reference to the apoc- 

remark which is worthy of attention. In reply to the question, "At what 
time was the last division (the Hagiographa) gathered and put in order?" 
he says : " The admirable book of Jesus Sirach, composed 180 B. C, in spite 
of its excellence as a book for the people, and although it was written in 
Hebrew, could find no place in the collection of the Kethubim (the Hagio- 
grapha), which, when we regard the almost canonical estimation in which 
this book was held, could only occur because the Kethubim (the last divis- 
ion of the canon) was already closed and completed." 

It is certain, on the basis of the most unbiased criticism, that the Old Tes- 
tament canon was closed towards the end of the first century A. D. (Bleek, 
Einleitung in das Alte Tedament, Berlin, 1878, p. 550), and it is very probable 
that it was completed three hundred years before. (Fiirst Ibid., p. 57: " So 
dass man mit Bestimentheit annehmen kann, dass um 200 v. Chr. die Ke- 
tubim bereits redigirt waren.") 

1 Contra Apion, i, 8, 

2 14b. 

3 Jerome, in the Prologus Galeatus, says : " Atque ita fiunt pariter veteria 
legis libri vigiutiduo ; id est, Moysi quinque, Prophetarum octo, Hagiogra- 
ponim novem. Quamquam nonnulli Ruth et Cinoth [Lamentationes], in- 
ter Hagiographa scriptitent, et hos libros in suo putent uumero supputan- 
dos, ac per hoc esse priscse legis libros vigintiquatuor." 



VARIOUS MISSTATEMENTS BY INGERSOLL. 77 

rjplia to which Ingersoll alludes, altliougli it was cur- 
rent among the Alexandrian Jews in the Greek, yet it 
is not quoted by Philo, who often refers to the Old 
Testament as Scripture. In the Talmud it is writ- 
ten: "He who brinscs into his house more than 
twenty-four books of the canon, brings a destruction 
into his house." j^nd in the Mishna it is recorded: 
" He who reads books that must be kept separate from 
the canonical ones, forfeits eternal life." ^ 

Ingersoll w^ants we should know that the Hebrew 
MS. was translated into Greek two or three years be- 
fore Christ. He undoubtedly refers to the Septuagint 
which was prepared, according to the best authorities, 
between 285 and 150 B. C.'^ The date which he gives 
is a disgraceful blunder. "While it is true that per- 
haps no manuscripts of the Hebrew Scriptures have 
yet been discovered, extending back beyond 916 A. D.," 

1 Biesenthal, in The Bibliotheca Sacra, Andover, 1875, pp. 163-164. 

2 Fritsche in Herzog's and Plitt's EeaZ Encyklopadie, Leipzig, 1877, p. 282, 
says: "Everything goes to show that at first considerable portions of the 
Old Testament were translated under the Ptolemies, especially Ptolemy 
Philadelphus (285-2 i-? B.C.); afterwards translations of the rest of the Scrip- 
tures were gradually prepared, and shortly after the middle of the second 
century before Christ, no Scripture remained iiutranslated." Compare 
Blee^, Einleitung in das Alte Testament, Berlin, 1878, p. 571. 

sSeeHarkavy and Strack, Catalog der Hebrdischen Bibelhand serif ten der 
Kaiserlichen OejSentlihchen Blbliofhek in St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg, 1875, p. 223. 
Schiller-fczinessy in the Catalogue of the Hebrew 3/SS. preserved in the Univer- 
sity Library, Cambridge, 1876, p. 14, claims, that the date of No. 12, given 
in the postscript, the 7 of Adar 616 (Feb. 18, 856 A. D.), is correct, hence this 
would be the oldest O. T. manuscript. The comparatively recent age of our 



78 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

yet it does not disprove the substantial accuracy of 
our present Hebrew manuscripts concerning wbicli 
Dr. Biesenthal, an eminent Ixabbinical scholar, makes 
the following remark : ^ " The Jews were not at all 
times faithful keepers of the spirit and substance, 
but they surely were more than any other nation, the 
guardians and preservers of the word of the Old 
Testament. .... Countless precepts threaten 
the woes of hell to the copyist of the scriptures of 
the Old Testament, if he should dare to add or leave 
out a syllable." 

We pass from one succession of Ingersoll's blunders 
or misrepresentations to another. What can be more 
absurd in the light of history than the statement that 
Henry YIII. took a little time between murdering his 
wives to see that the Word of God was translated cor- 
rectly ? " The fact is that Tyndale, who translated the 

oldest Hebrew manuscripts does not militate against their authority. It 
should be remembered that " we have no complete copy of Homer himself 
prior to the thirteenth century." (Scrivener's Introduction, p. 4.), 

1 Bibliotheca Sacra, Andover, 1865, p. 162. The exactness which the Jews 
observed in their preparation of Pentateuch rolls is indicated in Home's 
Introduction, London, 1869, vol. ii. p. 41 : " The want of a single letter, or 
the redundance of a single letter, the writing of prose as verse, or verse as 
prose, respectively, vitiates a manuscript ; and when a copy has been com- 
pleted, it must be examined and corrected within thirty days after the 
writing has been finished, in order to determine whether it is to be ap- 
proved or rejected." 

Carpzovii, Oritica Sacra, Lips\2&, 1718, p. 372, says: " Maimondes mentions 
twenty faults, a single one of which profanes or renders the whole volume 
useless." 



VARIOUS MISSTATEMENTS BY INGERSOLL. 79 

Bible, was put to death under Henry in the year 1536/ 
and that Miles Coverdale, Tyndale's friend, as a piece 
of good policy, dedicated his version to Henry. '^ I 
need not say that the statement that " Elizabeth, the 
murderess of Mary, Queen ot Scotts, got up another 
edition, which also did not suit," is fake. The Gene- 
van Bible, which received its name from the place 
where it was prepared, was dedicated to Queen Eliza- 
beth for the sake of her patronage, but she had noth- 
ing to do in bringing about its translation or that of 
the Bishop's Bible.' 

What does Ingersoll mean when in the same connec- 
tion he says: " You must recollect that we are indebt- 
ed to murderers for our Bibles and creeds? " This is 
a statement which every w^ell-in formed person knows 
to be false on its very face, but there are very many 
who have not the ready knowledge to nail it at once 

' Anne Boleyn was favorable to Tyndale, and in recognition of her kind 
intervention for him, he presented her with a copy of the New Testament 
bound In vellum and beautifully illuminated. (Westcott, A General View 
of the History of the Evglish Bible, London, 1872, p. 49). His last prayer was: 
"Lord, opeu the King of England's eyes." {Ibid., p. 51.) 

2 "Westcott, Ibid., p. 61, says : " His [Coverdale's] object was to bring about 
the open circulation of the Scriptures, and that could only be by securing 
the king's favor. To this end the work was dedicated to Henry VIII. 

^Ibid., p. 92. In regard to the Bishop's Bible, Westcott remarks (p. lOl-i): 
"When the edition was ready for publication, Parker endeavored to obtain 
through Cecil, a recognition of it by the Queen. . . . There is no evidence 
to show whether the Queen returned any answer to his petition." Although 
the circulation of the Bible was secured, her attitude towards the movement 
was evidently rather that of concession than of hearty patronage. 



80 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

as a lie. Without respect to the subject matter treated, 
it is scandalous that a professedly well educated man 
should make such mistakes, which reference to any 
good encyclopaedia would prevent. 

"We have seen how false the assertions were, that 
Henry VIII. or Elizabeth had anything to do with the 
translation of the Scriptures. Ingersoll charges that 
" Constantine, who helped on the good work in its 
early stages, murdered his wife and child." This accu- 
sation is substantially true with respect to his son, and 
it is a dark stain on Constantine's memory.' It i^ also 
true that he bade Eusebius of Csesarea have fifty copies 
of the Scriptures written on prepared skins by skilled 
scribes,^ and that he was prominent in securing the 

iProf. SchaflF, History of the Christian Church, New York, 1870, Vol. ii, pp. 15- 
17, indicates the lights as well as the shadows of Constantine's character. 
" His moral character was not without noble traits, among which a chistity 
rare for the time, and a liberality and beneficence bordering on wasief alness 
were prominent. Many of his laws and regulations breathed the spirit of 
Christian justice and humanity, promoted the elevation of the female sex, 
improved the condition of slaves and of unfortunates, and gave free play to 
the eflBciency of the church throughout the whole empire. Altogether, he 
was one of the best, the most fortunate, and the most influential of the 
Roman emperors, Christian and pagan. 

[But] the very brightest period of his reign is stained with gross crimes, 
which even the spirit of the age, and the policy of an absolute monarch, can- 
not excuse Worst of all is the murder of his eldest son, Crispus, in 326, 

who had incurred suspicion of political conspir<acy and of adulterous and in- 
cestuous purposes towards his step-mother, Fausta, but is generally regarded 
as innocent. . . He hasbeen frequently charged, besides,though it would seem 
altogether unjustly, with the death of his second wife. . . The accounts of the 
cause and manner of her death are so late and discordant as to make Con- 
stantine's part in it at least very doubtful." 

2Wescott. A General Survey of the History of the Canon, London, 1875, p. 422. 



VARIOUS MISSTATEMENTS BY INGEESOLL. 81 

meeting of the ecumenical council at Nicaea, in 
the year 325, at which he presided, and where the 
Nicene Creed was prepared. But it is not true, 
as Ingersoli would have us infer, that we are in- 
debted to him for those copies of the Bible, and for 
that creed because he had put his son to death. Ko, 
the first statesman of his time, he recognized the 
growing power of Christianity before which heathen- 
ism must fall, he therefore, at first, protected it as a 
political measure.^ Having done this he perceived that 
it was desirable in a state religion that there should be 
uniformity.'^ As the church was divided into the or- 
thodox party and the Arians, and the strife threatened 
to be dangerous politically, he called the council at 
]^icaea, in order that harmony in doctrine might be 
secured. How little he cared for the distinction which 
divided the two parties, appears from the fact that he 
was at first in favor of a sj^mbol, which, failing to 
assert the deity of Christ, was agreeable to the Arians, 
but afterwards, for the sake of peace, gave his voice for 
the orthodox creed.' !N'ow, in view of these facts, how 
shameless and ignorant the charge that we are indebt- 
ed to murderers for our Bibles and creeds ! 
The assertion that there are at least one hundred 

1 Compare Schaff, Vol. ii, p, 13. 

2 Ibid. p. 621. 

3 Schaff, Vol. ii, p. 628. 

6 



82 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

thousand errors in the Old Testament, is doubtless a 
despicable falsehood/ and the statement that hereafter 
the prophet will be fed by Arabs instead of ravens,^ 
and that Samson's three hundred foxes will be three 
hundred sheaves, is utterly without foundation. 

Ingersoll wishes us to know that there was no con- 
temporaneous literature at the time the Bible was 
composed. Unfortunately for him, there are several 
Egyptian papyrus rolls in existence, which date back 
even earlier than the time of Moses. Dr. Heinrich 
Brugsch-Bey says,^ after giving a quotation from a 
certain roll: '' We may presuppose that many a He- 
brew, perhaps Moses himself, encountered the Egyp- 
tian scribe as he was wandering through the streets 
of the temple-city [Kamses] as they were adorned 
for the festival." What then was to hinder him who 
was skilled in all the learning of the Egyptians, as the 

1 Prof. Green, of the Old Testament Company of American Revisers,writes 
as follows: "IngersoU's gross misrepresentation of the number of mis- 
takes in the authorized version, is of course absurd enough and easily set 
aside, as both ignorant and malicious. I am sorry that I have not statis- 
tics at hand with which to supply you. I have preserved no record of 
the number of deviations from the original which affect the sense. The 
more carefully I study our version, the more 1 am impressed with its great 
excellence. It would be very hard, I think, for Ingersoll or any one else 
to show that the faith of Christendom would be altered in any particular 
if there had been no blemish whatever in our version, but it had accu- 
rately represented the originals in eveiy word and sentence." 

2 This is a rationalistic interpretation, which was exploded long ago. 
^Geschichte ^gyptens unter den Pharaonen, Leipzig 1877, p. 549. 



VARIOUS MISSTATEMENTS BY IXGERSOLL. 83 

reputed son of Fliaraoh's daugliter, from being an 
adept in the art of writing? * 

The affirmation that the Jews were infinitely ignor- 
ant in their day and generation is a mere assertion, 
while the declaration that they were isolated by bigotry 
and wickedness from the rest of the world is a scur- 
rilous falsehood. The nations that surrounded them 
were far more wicked than they. 

It does not seem possible that any American of ordi- 
nary intelligence and in his right mind could say: " I 
want vou to understand that where this Bible has been, 
man has hated his brother — there have been dungeons, 
racks, thumb-screws and the sword." ' I pity the man 

1 Brugscli, IMd.. p. 500, after giving a quotation from an Egyptian poet, 
says : " At all events, the peculiar order of thought of the Egyptian poet 
in the fourteenth century before Christ, shines out in its entire fullness and 
confirms our opinion, that the Mosaic language txhibi s Unelf as a contemporary 
image of the Egyptian manner of speech." The Italics are my own. 

- There is only one sense in which this statement can be true, and that 
is that the Bible, in arousing the antagonism of bad men and corrupt sys- 
tems, has often made those who believed in its truths martyrs. But, while 
it must be admitted that there have been sporadic ca^es of persecution owing 
to superstition and a misinterpretation of the Bible, as in the case of the 
so-called Salem witches (Upham, Salem Witchcraft, Boston, 1867, vols, i and 
ii), it is not true that the spirit of the Scriptures makes men persecutors of 
others. There has been no power more intolerant than that of Popery, 
which forbids the masses freely to read the Word of God {The Protestant, 
Hartford, 1836, vol. ii, pp. 352-53), and it is in this very system that the In- 
Quisition, with all its horrors, originated. " In Spain alone, according to 
Llorente, upwards of three hundred and forty thousand persons were judged 
and punished one way or another by the tribunal. Of these nearly thirty- 
two thousand were burned alive" Encyclopsedia B it'anica. Boston. 1856, 
vol. xii, p. 391). Compare Llorente's Kritische Geschichte der Spanischen In- 
quisition, Gmund, 1819, Fox, Book of Maityrs, etc. etc. 



84 INGEESOLL AND MOSES. 

that can credit such a statement. I can scarcely think 
that Ingersoll hinuelf believes that that book which 
bids lis break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free ; 
which in the teachings of Christ breathes such love, 
could have such an eifect. This assertion rests on 
just such a perversion of history as we have already 
remarked. Oh! it makes one's blood boil to hear such 
statements rejDcated before audiences that lay claim to 
some refinement and intelligence. It makes one's 
cheek mantle with shame to think such a statement 
could be taken for sober truth. Every intelligent per- 
son knows that those instruments of torture abounded 
most when it was considered a crime to read the Bible- 
Shame on the man who can invent such a story! 

Ingersoll, when he speaks of the selfishness of the 
Christian heaven, forgets that Christ came with infinite 
love to open the doors of heaven to all who believe 
on him, and that the Apostle Paul said (Kom. ix, 3): 
" I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ 
for my brethern, my kinsman, according to the flesh." 
Let the graves of the missionaries off the west coast 
of Africa testify whether Christians who are imbued 
with the spirit of the Scriptures care nothing for the 
salvation of their fellow men. 

Ingersoll professes not to believe in the Bible on ac- 
count of the Pentateuch, and the story of the bears, 



VARIOUS MISSTATEMENTS BY INGEESOLL. 85 

who came out and tore the children who mocked Elisha 
(2 Kings, ii, 23-24). The story is a brief one. It is 
the only vindictive miracle which was wTOUght through 
the agency of a peculiarly tender-hearted prophet. 
Ingersoll has pictured the frantic grief of the mothers 
at finding their darlings torn by the wild beasts. But 
tliere is another side to this scene. A party of street 
Arabs who have often heard their idolatrous parents re- 
vile the prophet, and who are the very embodiment of 
their hatred, dog his footsteps and mock him as the rep- 
resentative of Jehovah. With prophetic instinct of 
their destruction from the Lord he pronounces the curse 
which is the forerunner of the punishment falling up- 
on them and their parents. 

It is a sad picture, but perhaps not more sad than 
that of little children who carry the sins of their 
pxrents, in scarred faces and aching limbs till they 
stumble into the grave. 

The misery in this world is a mystery which the 
Scriptures explain as the result of sin. Jesus comes 
with infinite love to bear the load of our transgres- 
sions, to open wide the gates of heaven to all who will 
accept him. He has not come to destroy men's lives, 
but to save them. His dying accents on the cross re- 
specting his murderers were, " Father, forgive them, 
for they know not what they do." He has gone to pre- 



86 INGERSOLL AND MOSES. 

pare a place for his people, where there will be no 
more sorrow, nor crying, where the wicked cease from 
troubling and the weary are at rest. 

It is against this gospel, whose very breath is love, 
which simply tells men of their disease, that it may 
apply the remedy, which merely points out the dan- 
ger that it may provide a refuge, that Ingersoll is 
arrayed, and which he wishes to banish from the earth. 
And what does he give us in its place? He virtually 
says to the sensualist: "Make the most of this life; 
you have no assurance that there is any hereafter." 
He comes to the mother, whose heart is breaking over 
the loss of a beloved babe, into whose soul dull de- 
spair has not yet entered, because she has heard the 
voice of Him who has said: " I am the resurrection and 
the life," and tells her that her hope is an idle dream. 

He comes to those who are often in prayer, who 
mourn over sin, who are struggling and crying for a 
purer and better life, like that of Jesus, and tells them 
religion is a sham. 

He comes to the youth who stands on the threshold 
of life, with sweet persuasion, like an angel of light, 
and tells him that a mother's faith and a mother's pray- 
ers are a weak superstition, and bids him go forth to 
meet the tremendous battle of life, shorn of that faith 
in God which makes men heroes and women sublime. 



VAEIOUS MISSTATEMENTS BY IXGEBSOLL. 87 

"When Christianity is banislied from the earth, when 
darkness falls upon the nations, when hospitals are 
razed to their foundations, the old and weak are ex- 
posed to the fury of the elements by their unnatural 
relatives, and lust and murder hold high carnival, then 
let Byron's dream be realized: let the bright sun be 
extinguished, the stars wander darkling in the eternal 
space, rayless and pathless, and the icy earth swdng, 
blind and blackening, in the moonless air. 

But that day will never come. Scoffers and heathen 
from Porphyry and Julian down, have entered this 
contest only to experience inglorious defeat. 

History repeats itself. About one hundred years ago 
Thomas Paine arrayed himself against Christianity,^ 
and now Robert Ingersoll is treading in his footsteps. 
Paine could not crush Christianty, nor can Ingersoll. 
It possesses, from its Founder, a divine energy. " Who- 
soever falleth on this stone shall be broken, but on 
whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder." 

1 The Age of Reason, Paris, 179i. 



APPENDICES. 



APPENDICES. 



APPENDIX A. 

THE APPOINTMENT OF LUMINARIES. 

It is interesting to notice that Rashi, who died 1105, and conse- 
quently knew nothing of modern scientific theories, in his comment 
on Gen. i. 14, maintains that the sun and moon were created on 
the first day (they being included in the account of the creation of 
the heavens), although they were not set apart to their distinctive 
work until the fourth day. Similarly, Dawson says: ^ "The lumi- 
naries [light- bearers] were made or appointed to their office on the 
fourth day. They are not said to have been created, being inclu- 
ded in the creation of the beginning; they were now completed, 
and fully fitted for their work. An important part of this fitting 
seems to have been the setting or placing them in the heavens, 
conveying to us the impression that the mutual relations and reg- 
ular motions of the heavenly bodies were now for the first time 
perfected." 

1 The Origin of the World, New York, 1877, p. 201. 

(91) 



92 APPENDIX A. 



I am aware that when I assert that the original does not indi- 
cate the creation of the luminaries on the fourth day, I am in an- 
tagonism to Prof. Delitzsch, who remarks: ^ "The opinion that 
the heavenly bodies were not created on the fourth day, but were 
only brought into a definite relation to the earth, is contrary to the 
terms of the narrative." Dillmann is of the same opinion,' and 
says that the entire representation, while fitted to convey divine 
truth, is from the ancient childlike view of the world as the centre 
of the universe. I am confident, however, with all deference to 
these eminent authorities, that we have not to do with a creation 
of certain celestial bodies, but with their inauguration to specific 
duties. The sun and moon became meoroth (bearers of light) per- 
haps by the gift of a luminous atmosphere to the former. In ver. 
16, the word which is translated made could be rendered constitu- 
ted, appointed, so that we can read with perfect propriety: *'And 
God appointed two great lights." Compare 1 Kings, xii. 31 : 
"And he made (appointed) priests." 2 Kings, xxi. 6: "And he 
made (appointed) necromancers and sorcerers." After a compar- 
ison with such passages, there seems to be no violence in the in- 
terpretation suggested. The creation of light on the first day, and 
the establishment of luminaries on the fourth, instead of being a 
sign of ignorance, is, as Dana has well observed, an indication of 
divine wisdom.* 



1 Commentar uber die Genesis. Leipzig, 1872, p. 94. 

2 Die Genesis, Leipzig, 1875, pp. 30-31. 

3 Manual of Geology, New York, 1876. p. 767. 



APPENDIX B. 93 



APPENDIX B. 

*'THE SONS OF GOD." 

Gen. vi, 2. 

Three interpretations liave been given of this difl&cult passage : 
(1.) That of the Jews, who maintained that the hene Elohim {Sons 
of God) indicate men of high rank, and that the henoth haadam 
{daughters of men) were women of plebeian origin. We have no 
evidence, however, that the hene Elohim and the hene haadam are 
ever contrasted in this way. Ps. xUx, 2 (Hebr. 3), makes a con- 
trast between ish, vir and adam, homo: '* Both low {hene adam) 
and high {bene ish.) " Besides, there is nothing in the connection 
to indicate that a misalliance, in point of station, was the occasion 
of those terrible judgments that visited the earth. (2.) BothPhilo 
and Josephus, the earliest Christian Fathers, and many modem com- 
mentators (such as Baumgarten, Hofmann, Knoble, Ewald, Dill- 
mann, Delitzsch, etc.) hold that the hene Elohim {Sons of God) 
were angels. There are several reasons which seem to commend 
this view as presented by evangelical interpreters : a. The term 
hene Elohim {Sons of God) in every other passage is applied exclu- 
sively to angels. (Job i, 6; ii, 1; xxxviii, 7.) h. It seems prob- 
able that the fallen angels mentioned in Jude, 6, by their appear- 
ance on the earth, contributed to the terrible catastrophe of the 
flood. 

But while the term hene Elohim signifies angels in the passages 
mentioned, yet there is nothing to indicate that any such designa- 
tion was employed for them in Genesis, where they are spoken of 
as men (xviii, 2), and afterwards as the two angels {shene hamma- 



94 APPENDIX B, 



lachim, xix, 1); and again as the angels of God (malache Elohim, 
xxviii, 12, wlaich, according to the fragmentary hypothesis, belongs 
to the same author as vi, 2). Besides this fact, however, that the 
author of Genesis uses a different designation for angels, we find 
that pious men are called '' sons of the living God " {bene El Chat/, 
Hos. i, 10, orii, 1, and Deut. xiv, 1: *' Sons are ye unto the Lord 
your God "). Moreover, according to the teaching of Christ, angels 
do not marry (Matt, xxii, 30). Therefore we must look for an- 
other interpretation. (3.) From the time of Augustine and Chry- 
sostom to the present it has been widely held that the hene Elohim 
{sons of God) were the Sethites, and that henoth haadam {daugh- 
ters of men, vi, 2,) were Cainitic women. This view is best adapted 
to the connection. For in the preceding chapters we have two 
lines distinctly discriminated; that of Cain (iv, 17-24), and that 
of Seth, who took the place of Abel (iv, 25). These were prob- 
ably not the only children of Adam, but are mentioned as exam- 
ples of the antagonism which has existed between the church and 
the world. The Cainitic race is distinguished for violence (iv, 8, 
23,) and polygamy (iv. 19); that of Seth for piety (iv, 26; v, 22). 
Now, what explanation have we in the preceding hypothesis of 
the fact that the earth was corrupt and filled with violence, and 
that Noah was the only one of the Sethites that remained faith- 
ful in this apostacy? If we maintain that the two races inter- 
married, we have a reasonable explanation of the great change 
which came over the race of Seth — one that was fully in accor- 
dance with the warnings of the Bible (Num. xxv, 1, 2; Deut. vii, 
3, 4; Josh, xxiii, 12, 13). We have already seen that pious Israel- 
ites were called sons of God, hence there is no reason why this 
term should not be applied to the Sethites here. But it may be ob- 
jected that the term tenoth haadam (daughters of men, vi, 2,) 



APPENDIX C. 95 



cannot apply merely to the Cainitic women, since the term men 
in the first verse has a more general signification. This objection, 
however, is not serious, when we consider that the expression 
^'daughters of men" receives a special and narrower signifi- 
cance through contrast with the term "sons of God." When, 
therefore, we remember that angels are never designated by this 
term in Genesis, but by another; that God's chosen people are 
called his children; that according to the teaching of Christ, angels 
are said not to marry, and that the corruption of the Sethites is 
best accounted for by intermarriage with the parallel Cainitic 
race, there seem to me to be the best reasons for adopting, with 
Dettinger, Hengstenberg, Keil, Oehler and Lange, the view just 
given. 



APPENDIX C. 

TRADITIONS CONCERNING THE FLOOD. 

Although unevangelical scientists and negative critics dispute 
the fact of the Noachian deluge, and try to explain the numerous 
traditions respecting this event, either as the result of the exag- 
gerated accounts of local floods, or from a tendency of the human 
race to produce the same myths, yet, when we examine these 
various traditions, the theories proposed do not seem to furnish so 
satisfactory an explanation of their great number, and of the 
striking similarity which we find in some of them, as the suppo- 
sition that many of them are more or less distinct reminiscences 
of the same great catastrophe. 

Let us consider a few of these traditions in detail. With the 



96 APPENDIX C. 



exception of some new matters which I have gleaned from other 
sources, I am indebted to Prof. 0. Zockler {Die Sinutfluth-Sagen 
des Alterthums in the Jahrhucher fur Deutsche Theologie^ Gotha, 
1870, pp. 319-42) for the materials of the following sketch: 

1. 

THE CHALDEAN STORY OF THE FLOOD. 

This tradition, according to George Smith {The Chaldean Ac- 
count of the Genesis, New York, 1876, p. 286), corresponds with 
the Biblical account in Genesis in twenty-three particulars, 
although with certain differences. The flood is said to be sent, as 
it would seem, in punishment of sin. An ark is to be constructed 
and covered within and without with bitumen. The animals are 
to be rescued in it. After seven days the ark rests upon a moun- 
tain. A dove and swallow are sent forth, which both return, but 
a raven that is set at liberty does not come back again. A sacri- 
fice is offered after the denizens of the ark have left it. The prayer 
rises that a flood may no more visit the earth, which is followed 
by a divine covenant and blessing. While this account differs in 
detail from the one in Genesis, yet these points of similarity can- 
not have been accidental. 

2. 

THE ACCOUNT OF BEEOSTJS. 

*'Xisuthros, the Babylonian Noah, the last of the ten antedilu- 
vian patriarchs or primitive kings, receives in a dream a vision of 
the God Kronos, who announces to him that man will be destroyed 
on the fifteenth of the month Desios by a universal flood, and com- 
mands him to buUd a ship for the rescue of himself and his near- 
est relatives and friends. The ship, which Xisuthros, obedient to 



APPENDIX C. 97 



this command constructs, has the colossal length of five stadia (over 
2,800 feet), and a breadth of two stadia (between eleven and twelve 
hundred feet). Besides the food for himself, his family and friends, 
Xisuthros takes a large number of animals and birds with him in 
the ship, and thus saves them also from the universal destruction. 
When the waters begin to diminish, he lets one of the birds fly, 
but it returns without having found a resting place. A second, 
sent out later, returns with some mud on its feet. A third does 
not return. The ark lands upon one of the mountains of Armenia. 
Xisuthros, with his wife and children, leave the ark. He rears an 
altar to the gods and brings them offerings. As a reward for this, 
his piety, he as well as his friends, at a later period, are taken to 
heaven and placed among the gods." 

We find in the general outlines of this Chaldeo-Babj^onian 
myth, which is related to the preceding, a strong resemblance to 
the Biblical narrative. 

3. 

INDO-EUROPEAN TEAEITIONS. 

The Armenian tradition mentions Ararat as the landing-place. 
The Greek tradition, while it localizes the deluge in different ways, 
according to the mythical point of view of the various Greek tribes, 
considers the flood in every case as a destruction of all men with 
a few exceptions. The East Indian tradition is interesting in this 
respect, that the entire human race after the flood are descended 
from Manus, and the seven wise ones who are rescued with him, 
thus corresponding to the eight persons saved in the ark, as men- 
tioned in Genesis (Noah and his wife, his three sons and their 
wives). While the Persians, the Germans, and the Scandinavians 
have their traditions, they are peculiar in confusing the creation^ 
and the deluge, Adam and Noah together. 
7 



98 APPENDIX C. 



4. 

THE CHINESE TRADITION, 6C0 B. C. 

'* Under tlie three primitive emperors, Yao, Si and Ki, an im- 
mense flood covered all the nine parts of the world, even the highest 
mountains, and drowned all men. Only the three emperors, Yao, 
Si and Ki, whose names have an apparent relationship with those 
of the sons of Noah, Japheth, Shem and Ham (Cham, ch^k) save 
themselves in a ship, which finally lands on the summit of the 
mountain Jo-lti. After the drawing off of the waters, they bring 

a thank-offering in the middle of the world, to the God of heaven, 
Shang-ti.i" 

5. 

AMERICAN TRADITIONS. 

The Macusi Ind'ans of South America, represent that the only 
persons rescued from the immense flood peopled the earth by throw- 
irg stones behind them. The Maypuren and Tamanaken on the 
Orinoco have the same tradition, which resembles that of Deuca- 
lion and Pyrrha, only the human race who have been saved cast 
behind them the fruit of the MauriziaPalm, out of whose kernels 
new men arose. Various Brazilian Indian tribes derive their own 
and all other Indian races, from two people, a brother and a sis- 
ter, who only escaped from a great flood. According to the tradi- 
tion of the Peruvians, shortly before Manco Capac and his sister, 
the children of the sun, who came from the southeast, founded 

iKlaproth a. a. O. Windipchmani], Philosophie 1. 1, S. 211; Giitzlaff, 
Geschichte des chines. Reichs (von Neumann), p. 26, f. Vgl. P.J. Plath, 
Ueber die Glaubwiirdigkeit der altesten chines. Geschichte, Miinchen, 
1866. Lj^ell (Principles of Geology, New York, 1877, vol. 1, pp. 10-11) asserts 
on the authority of Mr. Davis, who accompanied two embassies to China 
that the great flood of the Chinese has been erroneously identified with the 
Noachian deluge. It seems doubtful however, whether Mr. Davis saw 
the tradition in the form given above. 



APPENDIX C. 99 



the old kingdom of tlie Incas with its service of the sun, only four 
men and four women, or eight persons in all, escaped from the 
waters of a universaldeluge to the caves of the highest mountains 
and did not go out from them again until the dogs which they had 
sent forth to investigate, no longer returned with wet, but with 
nmddy feet. The Aztecs of Mexico relate partly in oral traditions, 
partly by means of remarkable representations upon old stone 
monuments, that only one man, Coxcox, with his wife, Cihuakoatl, 
(the " serpent- woman" through whom sin entered into the world 
after the flood) saved themselves in a boat from the universal 
flood. The birds which were sent out to ascertain the state of the 
water, appear to have played a prominent part in this tradition." 
It has been urged that these traditions may have been imported 
from Christian Europe by the Northmen, or by the Spanish and 
Portuguese; Zockler, however, maintains that they have come with 
the people from eastern Asia over the Pacific Ocean. In this con- 
nection he mentions a fact, which tends to show the fallacy of 
LyelFs position : that the various accounts of the flood among dif- 
ferent nations have arisen from local inundations, namely, that the 
tradition of the building of a tower as the occasion of the separa- 
tion of the peoples and the confusion of tongues, is found among 
almost all of the above named tribes of North America. As evi- 
dence of the position that these traditions were rather derived by 
the way of the Pacific at a very early period, than by the Atlantic 
through Christian influence, he shows that the inhabitants of the 
Fiji, Samoan, Tahitian and South Sea islands, all have their le- 
gends of the deluge in various forms, thus establishing a bridge 
between the eastern shore of Asia and the American continent. 



100 APPENDIX D. 



APPENDIX D. 

THE RAPID INCREASE OF THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT. 

Rosenmliller says: ^ " The Israelites lived in the most productive 
portion of the most productive of all lands, which, through the 
fruitfulness of the women, was also so pre-eminent above all other 
lands, that, according to the testimony of the greatest of all natu- 
ralists among the ancients, Aristotle, the women in Egypt not only 
often bore twins, but also brought to light far more frequently 
than elsewhere, three, four, and sometimes five children at a birth. 
He teUs us of a woman {Hist. Animal^ vii, 4) who was in the last 
named condition four times.^ Maillet, who lived sixteen years as 
French consul in Egypt, says:^ " The air in this country is much 
purer and better than in any other. This salubrity of the air im- 
parts itself to all organic beings — plants and animals. The 
females, not only of the human species, but also of animals, are 
more fruitful than any other in the world." 

Reignald Stuart Poole of the British Museum, remarks* (article 
Egypt): "It is deemed disreputable for a young man not to 
.marry when he has attained a sufficient age; there are therefore 
few unmarried men. Girls, in like manner, marry very young; 
some even at ten years of age, and few remain single beyond the 
age of sixteen; they are generally very prolific.'''' The Italics are 
my own. 

iDas alte und neue Morgenland, Leipzig, 1818, vol. 1 p. 252. 

2 Compare Columella, Dere rust,\\i,%; Plin. Hist. Nat., vii, 3. 

^Description de V Egypte, Paris, 1733, i,p. 18. 

* Encyclopsedia Biilannica, New York, 1878, Vol. vii, p. 725. 



APPENDIX E. 101 



APPENDIX E. 

THE FORMER CONDITION OF THE WILDERNESS OF 

SINAI. 

While the wilderness^ was in the time of the Israelites an in- 
hospitable country, yet travelers agree in supposing that its re- 
sources for the sustenance of a people and their flocks were once 
much greater than at present. The arguments for this position are 
essentially as follows: 

1. At the present time, even under the most unfavorable condi- 
tions, it affo7'ds some facilities for pasturage and gardening. 

Prof. E. H. Palmer, of Cambridge, England, who spent ten 
months with a party engaged in the survey of the Desert of the 
Wanderings, has furnished much valuable information, bearing 
on the first as well as the other points. Speaking of the Tih, he 
remarks: '^ "In the larger wadies, draining as they do so exten- 
sive an area, a very considerable amount of moisture infiltrates 
through the soil, producing much more vegetation than in the 
plains. Sufficient pasturage for the camels is always to be had in 
these spots, and here and there a few patches of ground are even 
available for cultivation." 

In his account of the means of livelihood among the Teyaheh, 
who occupy the central portion of Et Tih, he thus describes the 
food of those who are not public carriers: ^ " Such of them as are 

1 Palmer, The Desert of the Exodus, New York, 1872, p. 232, says : " The scenes 
of the Exodus undoubtedly took place in that desert region, which is called 
by the appropriate name of Arabia Petraea, or the Stony. This includes, be- 
sides the Sinaitic Peninsula, the Badiet et Tih, (literally signifying ' the 
Desert of the Wanderings') and some portion of Idumaea and Moab?" 

2 Ibid. p. 235. 

3 Ibid. p. 239. 



102 APPENDIX E. 



not fortunate enough to participate in tliis traffic, live almost en- 
tirely on the milk of their sheep and camels, occasionally selling 
one of the latter, if this resource fail from drought or other causes. 
In many other parts of the desert, milk forms the sole article of 
diet obtainable by the Bedouins; and I have heard a well-authen- 
ticated case of an Arab in the north of Syria, who for three years 
had not tasted either water or solid food; an Arab, therefore, in 
selecting a spot for his encampment, regards the existence of a 
good supply of pasturage as of much greater importance than prox- 
imity of water. Only the Bedouins of the mountainous districts 
engage in anything like agricultural pursuits." In a similiar vein 
he says : ^ " The Arabs do occasionally practice agdculture, if sow- 
ing a little corn in a roughly ploughed field, and leaving the irri- 
gation to chance, can be so called, but it never occurs to them to 
take advantage of the works left them by the former owners of the 
soil." 

How closely the barrenness of the desert is connected with the 
neglect of its denizens is indicated in the following passage:^ 
" Camels and sheep are, as I have before said, the Bedouins' only 
means of subsistence; and so long, then, as he lives his present 
unsettled life, and can support himself with the milk which they 
produce, he is indpendent of all occupation save plundering. The 
effect of this is that the soil he owns deteriorates." 

Regarding the effects of cultivation in the wilderness, Stanley 
remarks:^ "How much may be done by a careful use of such 
water and such soil as the Desert supplies, may be seen by the oiAy 
two spots to which, now, a diligent and provident attention is 
paid; namely, the gardens at the AVells of Moses, under the care 

1 Ibid. p. 241. 

2 Palmer, The Desert of the Exodus, New York, 1872, p. 243. 
8 Stanley, /Sinai and Palestine, New York, 1870, p. 27. 



APPENDIX E. 103 



of the French and English agents from Suez, and the gardens in 
the valleys of Gebel Mousa, under the care of the Greek monks of 
the Convent of St. Catherine." 

Without dwelling upon this point, which has been abundantly 
corroborated by other tnivelers,^ we must remember, 

2. The tcilderness of Sinai is believed to have been anciently 
much more productive. 

In this connection, Palmer's theory, that northern Syria to Sinai, 
southward, is characterized by a diminishing degree of fertility, is 
of great interest. The most fertile section is that of Syria, which 
has a well-watered and productive soil. In Palestine from Mount 
Hermon, the soil is less productive. The south country of Palestine 
from the mountains of Judea to Kadesh, although now a barren 
waste, " presents signs of the most extensive cultivation even at a 
comparatively modern period. . . Between this [south country] 
and the edge of the Tih plateau, the country is even more barren; 
but there are still traces of a primeval race of inhabitants in the 
cairns and stone huts. . . At the time of the Exodus, it must have 
borne a similar relation to the then fertile region of the south 
country, which that now barren tract at the present day, bears to 
Palestine. . . From the analogous recession of fertility northward, 
we may fairly conclude that the surrounding country was then 
better supplied with water than it is now, and that it was, therefore, 
at least as suitable for the encampment of the Israelitish hosts as 
any spot in Sinai. "^ 

1 Robinson's Biblical Researches, Vol. I, p. 62, ff. ; Cf. Wellstedt's Reisen in 
Arabien. Halle, 1842, Vol. II p. 62; Tischendorf, R ise in den Orient, Leipzig, 
lh46, Vol. I, p. 187 ff. ; Ans clem heiligen Lande, Leipzig, 1863, p. 42 ff. ; Ebers 
Diirch Gosen zum ^?na?, Leipzig, 1872. p. 184 ff. ; Schaff, Through Bible Lands, 
Kew York, 1878, pp. 168, 187, 200; Bartlett, Fiom Egypt to ralesUne, New 
York, 1879, pp. 225, 254, 256, 276, etc. 

2 The Detert of the Exodus, New York, 1872, p. 285. 



104 APPENDIX E. 



But tliere a,re positive facts which indicate that the country was 
once much better adapted to afford sustenance for flocks and herds 
than at present. It is well known, what an effect the destruction 
of trees has in decreasing the moisture of any country. The trunks 
of palm trees, preserved by the salt, which have been washed up 
from the Dead Sea, on whose shores they no longer exist, show 
how the storms which must have raged with much more violence 
in the mountains of Sinai, may have stripped away the trees. In- 
deed Burckhardt, writing May 16, 1816, relates in regard to the 
eastern side of Mount Sinai :^ " On the declivity of the mountains, 
farther on, I saw many ruins of walls, and was informed by my 
guides, that fifty years ago this was one of the most fertile valleys 
of their country, full of date and other fruit trees; but that a violent 
flood tore up all the trees, and laid it waste in a few days, and that 
since that period it has been deserted." Wellstedt mentions a flood 
occurring in 1832 near Tor, which rose to the height of five feet 
above the level of the valley, and swept several trees away.*^ 

But Rev. F. W. Holland, who claims that the peninsula of Sinai 
must once have been far more fertile, gives the most striking illus- 
tration of the origin and the effect of floods. He says:^ *' In con- 
sequence, too, of the mountainous character of the peninsula of 
Sinai, the destruction of the trees would have a much more seri- 
ous effect than would be the case in most countries. Formerly, 
when the mountain- sides were terraced, when garden- walls 
extended across the wadies, and the roots of trees retained the 
moisture and broke the force of the water, the terrible floods that 
now occur, and sweep everything before them, were impossible." 

1 Travels in Syria and the Holy Land, London, 1822, p. 538. 

2 Reisen in AraUen, Halle; 1842, Vol. ii, p. 15. 

3 Capt. Wilson, Capt. Warreu, etc. The Recovery of Jerusalem; New 
York, 1871, p. 425. 



APPENDIX E. 105 



And then he goes on to describe how in tlie winter of 1867, he 
witnessed in Wady Feiran, one of the greatest floods that has 
ever been known in the peninsula, and how he had to escape for 
his life. *' In less than two hours, a dry desert wady, upward of 
three hundred yards broad, was turned into a foaming torrent 
from eight to ten feet deep, roaring and tearing down, and bear- 
ing everything before it (so that after the storm), two -miles of 
tamarisk-wood, which was situated above the palm-groves, had 
been completely washed away, and upward of a thousand palm- 
trees swept down to the sea. . . . 

"The fact is, that in consequence of the barrenness of the 
mountains, the water, when a heavy storm of rain falls, runs down 
from their rocky sides just as it does in this country from the 
roofs of our houses. . . . The monks used formerly to build 
walls across the gullies leading down from the mountains; they 
planted the wadies with fruit trees, and made terraces for their 
gardens, and these checked the drainage, and let it down by 
degrees, so that the storms in their days must have been compar- 
atively harmless. The Amalekites and former inhabitants of the 
peninsula adopted probably the same means for increasing the 
fertility of their country." 

In addition to the violence of nature, the inhabitants have con- 
tributed their share in desolating the wilderness. 

Rlippell, as quoted by Stanley,^ observes that the acacia trees 
have been of late years ruthlessly destroyed by the Bedouins for 
the sake of charcoal ; especially since they have been compelled by 
the Pasha of Egypt to pay a tribute in charcoal for an assau t 
committed on the Mecca caravan in the year 1823. Charcoal from 
the acacia is, in fact, the chief, perhaps it might be said the only, 

1 Sinai and Palestine, New York, 1870, p. 27, 



106 APPENDIX E. 



traffic of the peninsula." Hence it has been well remarked:^ 
"The devastation which began ages ago has, in fact, continued 
without cessation, and if it goes on at the present rate of increase, 
will ere long reduce the whole district to a state of utter aridity 
and barrenness. When Niebuhr visited the country at the begin- 
ning"^ of the last century, large supplies of vegetable produce were 
exported regularly to Egypt, showing that the original fertility was 
not even then exhausted. Those supplies have ceased, and the only 
wonder is that so much remains to satisfy a careful inquirer of the 
possibility of the events recorded in Exodus." 

Seetzen,^ Stanley, and Ebers incline to think that the wilder- 
ness was so very much more productive then than at present as to 
afford substantial supplies to the Israelites during their wander- 
ings. However this may be, we have no right to assume that there 
was not sufficient pasturage for their flocks and herds, and we 
know not which to wonder at most, the ignorance of a man who 
says there was not a blade of grass, or the credulity of those who 
applaud him. 

1 Speaker's Commemtary, New York, 1871, Vol. 1, p. 246. 

2 He really visited it in 1762. See Ritter, The Comparative Geography of 
Palestine, New York. 1870, Vol. I, pp. 255-56. 

3Seetzen, whom Ebers quotes with approval (Durch Gosen, p. 234), says. 
Vol. Ill, p. 79 : " What hindered them [the TsraelitesJ from enjoying one of 
the most healthful and appetizing means of diet, the milk and its products 
which their accompanying herds afforded them, and on which many tribes 
of the Bedouins still almost exclusively subsist? What hindered them 
from slaughtering their flocks and herds, and from enjoying the wild edible 
plants, such as the Bedouins now use [Of. Palmer, p. 260J the fruit of date 
trees, and the fish which the sea along the entire coast produced in abun- 
dance ? What hindered them from hunting birds [Schubert Reise in das 
Morgenland, Erlangen, 1839, Vol. II, 360-61, speaks of seeing clouds of birds 
in the neighborhood as he supposes of Kibroth-Hattaavah, which, accord- 
ing to Hammer, geschichte des Osmanischen Reiches, 22te Ausgabe, Vol. I, 
p. 724, appear every spring. He says: "A cloud of quails or other small 
birds resembling them, darkens the neighborhood all around, which the 
inhabitants preserve in vinegar as an article of food and trade"], gazelles 



APPENDIX F. 107 



APPENDIX F. 
" THE LAND FLOWING WITH MILK AND HONEY." 

There can be no doubt of the ancient fertility of Palestine. 
This is attested both by ancient and modern writers. 

1. Tacitus says regarding it (Hist. V, 6): "Showers are rare, 
the soil is rich. Besides our customary fruit, the balsam and palm 
are found." Ammianus Marcellinus testifies (Book XIV, Ch. viii, 
§ 11): " The last province of the Syrias is Palestine, a district of 
great extent, abounding in w^ell- cultivated and beautiful land.'^ 
Josephus adds his testimony (Wars of the Jews, Book III, Ch. iii, 
§ 2, Cf. ii, xxi, 2; iii, x, 8): "Nor hath the country [of the Galli- 
leans] been ever destitute of men of courage, or wanted a numer- 
ous set of them; for their soil is universally rich and fruitful, and 
full of the plantations of trees of all sorts, insomuch that it invites 
the most slothful to take pains in its cultivation, by its fruitfulness ; 
accordingly it is all cultivated by its inhabitants, and no part of it 
lies idle. Moreover, the cities He here very thick; and the very 
many villages there are here, are everywhere so full of people, by 
the richness of their soil, that the very least of them contain above 
fifteen thousand inhabitants. (Ill, x 8) : The country also that lies 

[Robinson, I, p. 43, Wellsted, II, p. 50], goats, etc., and from catching 
locusts." 

Compare, however, some very sensible remarks by Bartlett (From Egypt to 
Palestine, New York, 1873, p. 355), where after making every allowance for the 
supplies which the Israelites might obtain from the wilderness he says: 
"The consistency of the Biblical narrative is in nothing more manifest than 
in the fact that it narrates the Divine interposition to give the people water 
as only an exceptional thing (Cf. Wellsted, II, p. 61), but the miraculous 
supply of food as constant and permanent." 



108 APPENDIX F. 



over-against this lake hatli the same name of Gennesareth; its na- 
ture is wonderful, as well as its beauty; its soil is so fruitful that 
all sorts of trees can grow upon it, . . , for the temper of the 
air is so well mixed, that it agrees very well with those several 
sorts, particularly walnuts, which require the coldest air, flourish 
there in vast plenty; there are palm-trees also, which grow best in 
hot air; fig-trees also, and olives grow near them, which yet re- 
quire an air that is more temperate. . . . It is a happy con- 
tention of the seasons, as if every one of them laid claim to this 
country; for it not only nourishes different sorts of autumnal fruit 
beyond men's expectations, but preserves them a great while; it 
supplies men with the principal fruits, with grapes and figs con- 
tinually, during ten months of the year. (Ill, iii, 4) : They [Judea 
and Samaria] have abundance of trees, and are full of autumnal 
fruit, both that which grows wild, and that which is the effect of 
cultivation. ... By reason also of the excellent grass they 
have, their cattle yield more milk than do those in other places; and 
what is the greatest sign of excellency and of abundance, they 
each of them are very full of people. (IV, viii, 3.) This country 
(in the vicinity of Jericho) withal produces honey from bees." 

2. Rosenmtiller {Das alte und neue Morgenland, Leipzig, 1818, 
Vol. T, p. 263 ff.), says that milk and honey were the chief delica- 
cies of the ancients, and that the Bedouins express the happiness 
of a rich man and a prince by the proverb: " He sleeps with his 
mouth on a bottle of honey." Hence, through an abundance of 
milk and honey, not only the Hebrews, but also the Greeks and 
Romans, indicated the highest pleasure and fruitfulness. Thus 
the chorus in the BaccJiai of Euripides, v. 142, sing : 



" The land streams with honey, 
It fetreameth with wine, 
It streams with the nectar of hees." 



APPENDIX F. 109 



And Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, i, 111-12, describes the golden 
age: 

•' Here rivers of milk, there rivers of nectar were flowing, 
And from the green of the oaks the yellow honey was dropping." 

In the above passage [Ex. iii, 8] God describes the land of 
Canaan, or Palestine, as an exceedingly pleasant and fruitful land ; 
and it is so by nature, although it is so little distinguished at the 
present day for the rich productiveness of the soil. If Palestine 
were still cultivated and inhabited as formerly, it would not be 

inferior to any land in fertility and agreeableness The 

fame of the fertility of Palestine, and its former abundance of 
grain, wine and dates, has been perjpetuated through ancient coins, 
which are still in existence. The country, however, has been 
laid waste repeatedly, and has suffered greatly since it has come 
into the hands of the Turks. However, traces of the natural 
beauty and fertility of the land have not even yet entirely disap- 
peared, as the following quotation from d'Arvieux's Beisen,^ ii., 
p. 204. will show: *'One must admit, that if it were possible 
to live safely in this country, it would afford the most beautiful 
and agreeable residence in the world, partially on account of the 
charming variety of mountains and valleys, partly on account of 
the healthful air, which, through the natural flowers of the 
valleys and the fragrant plants upon the heights, is always 
filled with balmy odors. Most of these mountains are, indeed, 
dry and barren, and present more rock than soil adapted to 
cultivation, but the industry of the ancient inhabitants has 
overcome this defect of the ground. They hewed into these 
rocks from the foot to the summit, at regular intervals, filling in 
with soil, in which they planted, as upon the coast of Genoa, 

1 The original was entitled : Voyage fait par ordre du Boi dans la Pales- 
tine, vers le grand Emir, Paris, 1717. 



110 APPENDIX F. 



olives, figs, grape-vines and grain, together with all kinds of 
leguminous plants, which, through the help of the usual early and 
late rains, and of the dew which never ceases, the warmth of the 
sun and of the mild climate, produces the best fruits, and the most 
excellent com. Such terraces are still to be seen, which tbe Arabs 
in the surrounding villages preserve and cultivate with industry." 
Kosenmtiller goes on to state that at the beginning of the 
eighteenth century, Hebron alone exported fifteen tons of grape 
syrup ^ to Egypt, and after speaking of the cotton which the plain of 
Esdraelon produces, he says : " Numerous herds of cattle and sheep 
feed on the green hills of Galilee, and in the well watered meadows 
of the northern valley of the Jordan. Countless swarms of wild bees 
gather honey in the hollow trees, and in the crevices of the rocks; 
and so it is still literallt/ true that Palestine has an abundance of 
milk and honey. ''^ ^ 

1 Compare Robinson's Biblical Researches, Boston, 1868, Vol. ii, 81. 

2 Dean Stanley, in his Sinai and Palestine, New York, 1870, pp. 120-124, has 
shown most conclusively that an an affirmative answer can he returned to 
the question : " Can these stony hills, these deserted valleys be indeed the 
Land of Promise, the land flowing with milk and honey ? " 

" (1) The existence of a flourishing town or village on every hill, shows 
what the resources of the country must once have been. 

"(2) Those resources have been reduced tenfold (p. 120) by the destruc- 
tion of the forests and terraces. 

"(3) Palestine, not merely by its situation [with reference to the neigh- 
boring wastes], but by Its comparative fertility, might well be considered 
the prize of the Eastern world, the possession of which was the mark of 
God's peculiar favor; the spot for which the nations would contend. [The 
city of Jerusalem has been besieged twenty-seven times— Our Work in Pales- 
tine, London, 1873, pp. 48-68] : as on a smaller scale the Bedouin tribes for 
some 'diamond of the desert'— some 'palm -grove islanded amid the 
waste.' " 



APPENDIX G. Ill 



APPENDIX G. 

RAMSES 11. AND MOSES. 

Dr. Heinrich Brugscli-Bey, Geschichfe jEgyptens unter den 
Pharaonen, Leipzig, 1877, conclusively shows that Ramses II. was 
a contemporary of Moses. He says, pp. 549-50: " The new Pha- 
raoh, who did not know anything of Joseph (Ex. i, 8), who 
adorned the city of Ramses, the capital of the Tanitic province, 
and the city Pithom (Ex.. i, 11), the capital of the district, after- 
wards called Sethroites, with temple- cities [instead of treasure cit- 
ies, as the Egyptian meskenet according to Brugsch signifies tem- 
ple], is no other — can he no other — than Ramses II, of whose 
buildings at Zoan the monuments and papyrus rolls speak in full 
agreement. . . . Ramses II. is the Pharaoh of the oppression; he is 
the father of that nameless princess, who found on the bank 
of the stream, among the reeds, the child Moses." 

Upon p. 563 he mentions the following interesting fact: *' The 

monuments name among the daughters of Pharaoh his 

favorite daughter with a Semitic designation, Bint-antha: 'The 
daughter of Anaitis,' called Meri-amou and Neb-taui. A much 
younger sister, by the name of Meri seems to be worthy of men- 
tion, since her name reminds us of the Princess Merris (also 
called Thermuthis), who according to Jewish tradition found the 
boy Moses, as she was bathing, on the bank of the stream. Is it by 
chance — is it by divine providence — that under the reign of the third 
Ramses, about a hundred years after the death of his uncle, the 
great Sesostris, a place is mentioned in middle Egypt which bears 
the name of the great Jewish law-giver? It is called I-en-Moses, 
the island of Moses (or the shore of Moses.) " 



112 APPENDIX H. 



APPENDIX H. 

ROMAN SLAVERY. 

LecMer, in a university programme, has given some interesting 
facts as to the refined cruelties of Roman slavery:^ " They did not 
allow a slave a word, but had intercourse with him only by signs. 
If, however, the slave did not immediately understand the sign 
given, or even when he was compelled to cough or sneeze, etc., he 
was punished severely. If he allowed himself to be guilty of an 
excitement of anger, of a word of impatience, his master could 
whip him to death, or cause him to be strangled, or deliver him 
over for a combat with the wild beasts on the arena, or nail him to 
the cross. The despotism of the master knew no bounds which 
he was compelled to respect. The well known words of indomita- 
ble arbitrariness : Sic volo ; Sicjuheo ; Sit pro ratione voluntas ! In 
Juvenal vi, 222, stand in connection with the command of a master to 
nail a slave to the cross, while he is asked whether the slave is guilty 
of any fault at all ? When the same master raises the question : Is 
then the slave a man? " He therewith bluntly and boldly speaks 
out the full denial of all human rights which underlies such treat- 
ment. The slave was indeed, with respects to his rights, degraded 
to an animal 

If a slave through awkardness, had the misfortune to break even 
a plate or a cup, there were cases where his master threw him into 
the fish-pond, where he would become a living prey of the great 
fishes. It was held that fish that had been fed on human flesh 

1 Sklaverei und Christenthum, Leipzig 1877, pp. 19-20. 



APPENDIX I. IIJ 



would taste all the more delicious on the table. To such a degree 
of refined cannibalism had the culture of the ancient world sunk. 
Ordinances and laws from the times of the emperors, which 
deprived the masters of the right of visiting such barbarous pun- 
ishments, furnish irrefregable proof that such things must have 
occurred not infrequently. And not only violent men allowed 
themselves such things. Women, too, made nothing of treating 
their female slaves for some trifling offense with special [ausge- 
suchter] cruelty. Roman ladies of rank had, while they were 
dressed and adorned, long needles in their hands, in order to strike 
the female slaves who served them, in case of any oversight what- 
ever, in the breast or in the limbs; and in order that the needles 
might make deep wounds the unhappy slave girls had to stand be- 
fore their mistresses, naked to the girdle. And this occurred at 
the time of the highest civilization. So little is mere cultivation 
of the understanding, without the righteous fear of God and a 
moral and religious cultivation of the heart, a guarantee for 
genuine humanity." 



APPENDIX I. 

DOES THE BIBLE FAYOR POLYGAMY? 

The case has been well put by Michaelis, Mosaisches Becht^ 
Frankfurt, 1775, Part ii. p. 179: "It appears to me that Moses 
did not willingly permit polygamy as a matter, indifferent morally 
and poHtically, but to use an expression of Christ, on account of 
the Israelites' hardness of heart; that is, with other words, he 
was not favorable to it but he found it advisable to endure it as 
a civil measure. 
8 



114 APPENDIX I. 



"His first book, consisting- of history, contains much which does 
not commend polygamy. According to him, God gives, at a time 
when the rapid peopling of the earth was the main object of the 
Creator, to the first man only one wife, although it is clear that 
with four wives he could have begotten more children than with 
one. ... If polygamy had been pleasing to God, He would 
have commanded that every son of Noah should have married as 
many wives as possible. ... 

**He did not allow that eunuchs should be made among the 
Israelites. . , . Moreover, a eunuch who came from another 
country to the Israelites, was excluded by a special law for life 
from the people of God, i. e., was incapable of the civil and eccle- 
siastical rights of an Israelite, Deut. xxiii, 1. This was a very 
unfavorable ordinance for polygamy. Commonly polygamy and 
castration go together, and in the lands where the former prevails, 
there are thousands, yea millions of eunuchs. , • • In short 
without eunuchs no great seralgio can be kept.'* 



IKDEX. 



A. 

Acacia trees destroyed for the sake 
of charcoal, 105. 

Andover Theological Seminary, 13. 

Animal as helpmeet, 27. 

Animals, their destruction, 39. 

Apocrypha, prohibited, 77. 

Arabs instead of ravens, 82. 

Arabs occasionally practice agricul- 
ture, 102. 

Ararat, 38. 

Ark, its size, 36. 

Astronomy in five words, 23. 

Atonement, IngersoU's misstate- 
ment, 73, 

B. 

Barrenness of the wilderness occa- 
sioned by neglect, 102. 

Barrows on slavery, 71. 

Bears and Elisha, 85. 

Bentley on the text of the Scrip- 
tures, 74. 

Bible: dungeons, racks, etc., 83 ; "not 
inspired about religious liberty," 



6i; "not inspired in natural his* 

tory," 61. 
Birds, " can beat a partial flood," 36. 
Blood in consecration, 55. 

c. 

GANONofthe Old Testament, when 
completed, 75. 

Captive maidens, 67. 

Caricature of the Bible, 15. 

" Champion bird eaters," 46. 

Christian heaven, its selfishness, 84. 

Clothes did not grow with the chil- 
dren, 53. 

Confusion of tongues, 39. 

Constantine, 80. 

Contemporaneous literature of the 
Bible, 82. 

Creation out of nothing, 17. 

Creative days, their length, 24. 

D. 

Dana finds no contradiction between 

Genesis and Science, 40. 
Deluge, not universal, 35. 



(115) 



116 



INDEX. 



Deuteronomy, its author, 14. 
Divorce, God not its author, 59. 

E. 

Ebers, the food of the Israelites in 

the desert, 53. 
Egyptian army, 60. 
Egyptian women, their fruitfulness, 

100. 
Elizabeth and the translation of the 

Bible, 79. 
Errors in the Old Testament, 82. 

F. 

Fall of man, 30. 

First-born sons at the firet census, 45. 

Flood: Chaldean story, and account 
of Berosus, 96; Indo-European tra- 
ditions, 97; Chinese and Ameri- 
can traditions, 98. 

Floods in the wilderness, 105. 

Fruit after the fourth year, 55. 

G. 

Genesis, first two chapters, 26. 
Green, Prof, on the English version, 

82. 

H. 

Haeckel, origin of the organs of 
sense, 17. 

Hare, 61. 

Hebrew bondage kinder than Amer- 
ican slavery, 72. 

Henry VIII, attitude towards the Bi- 
ble, 78. 



Herschel on light, 24. 

Holy land : fertility, 48 ; size as prom- 
ised, 50. 

Hornets, 49. 

Hugh Miller, theory of the deluge, 
37. 

I. 

Increase of the Israelites, 43. 

Infanticide 10. 

IngersoU: criticism of the Divine 
government, 31 ; method, 11 ; ob- 
jections against Genesis, 40; the 
effect of his system, 86. 

Israelites, food during their wander- 
ings, 106. 

J. 

JosEPHUs on the number of books in 
the Old Testament, 76, 

L. 

Light, its division from darkness, 

17 ; on the third day, 21. 
Luminaries, their appointment, 91. 

M. 

Manna, 52. 

Manuscript, oldest of the Old Testa- 
ment. 77. 

McCaul, danger from wild beasts, 51. 

Midianitish women. 66. 

Milk in many places the sole article 
of diet among the Bedouins, 102. 

Milk and honey, 108. 

Miracles and slavery, 56. 



INDEX. 



117 



Mohammed, 63. 

Mommsen, Roman slavery, 72. 

Moses and the art of writing, 82. 

N. 

Neglect of the aged, sick and poor, 

9. 
Newcomb on light, 24. 
Nicene creed, 81. 
Noah, a preacher of righteou. aess, 

32. 

o. 

Oil, holy anointing, 54. 

P. 

Paiderastia, 9. 

Palestine : ancient fertility, 107 ; ef- 
fect of cultivation, 109, 

Parashas, or sections in the Bible, 25. 

Pharaoh's daughter. 111. 

Philo on humanity, 67. 

Plato, account of the origin of the 

sexes, 28. 

Polygamy, 63 ; does the Bible favor 
it? 113. 

Prologue of Sirach, 75. 

R. 

Rabbit, 61. 

Rain, effect upon the flood, 37. 

Rainbow, s:gn of the covenant, 38. 

Ramses II : Moses born during his 
reign, 61 ; the Pharaoh of the op- 
pression, 111. 



Rashi on the creation of the sun and 
moon, 91. 

Rib, Ingersoll's remarks considered, 

28. 

Riiins in the wilderness, 104. 

s. 

Scientific language not used in the 
Bible, 18-20. 

Scripture, its design, 18. 

Second commandment, 63. 

Septuagint, its date, 77. 

Servitude among the Hebrews of 
two kinds, 69. 

Sethites, characteristics, 94. 

Seven nations of Canaanites, 49. 

Shadow on the dial, 23. 

Sin and its results, 85. 

Sinai and Sahara, 47. 

Slave, murder, 71. 

Slave-wife, 70. 

Slavery : among the Israelites, 68 ; al- 
most a necessity under certain 
forms of civilization, 69 ; Roman, 
112. 

Snakes, 52. 

Sons of God, 93. 

Sun standing still, 21. 

T. 

Tacitus testimony as to the fertility 

of Palestine, 107. 
Ten commandments, 62, 
Terraces, 104. 



118 



INDEX. 



Text of the O. T. written without 

vowels, 24. 
Textual criticism, 74. 

w. 

Wild beasts in Palestine, 51. 
Wilderness : effect of cultivation, 

102 ; resources, 47. 
Wilderness of Sinai : exportation of 



vegetable produce to Egypt, 106; 

formerly more fertile, 101. 
Windows of the ark, 37. 
Woman: her creation, 27; position 

in the Bible, 59. 

z. 

Zend-Avesta, tradition of creation 
and fall, 30. 



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JANSEN, McCLURG & CO., Publisliers, Clucago, 111. 



"Unequalled by anything of the kind with which we are ac- 
quainted." — Christian Advocate, N. Y, 



CUMNOCK'S CHOICE EEADINGS. 

FOB PURLIC AND PRIVATE ENTERTAINMENT. ARRANGED FOR THE 
EXERCISES OF THE SCHOOL AND COLLEGE AND PUBLIC READER, 
WITH ELOCUTIONARY ADVICE. EDITED BY ROBERT 

MC'LAIN CUMNOCK, A. M., PROFESSOR OF 
RHETORIC AND ELOCUTION, NORTH- 
WESTERN UNIVERSITY. 



Large 12mo., cloth, ..... Price, $ 1.75. 



" It ought to become a special favorite among school and college 
students and public readers." — Evening Fust, Ntw York. 

" Taking into account the admirable type, the excellent taste, the 
brevity of the rhetorical counsels, the unsurpassed variety, we prefer 
Prof. Cumnock's book to every manual of the kind." — Christian Register, 
Boston. 

"Among the multitude of books issued for the same purpose during 
the past ten j'ears, we know of none so complete in all respects and so 
well fitted to the needs of the elocutionist as the volume before us." — 
Transcript, Boston. 

" No choicer casket of prose and poetry has been given to us by any 
other author. These are the culled flowers from the bouquet of litera- 
ture. They are of every nature knoAvn to the language, and each is of 
the best of its kind."— T/ie Post, San Francisco. 

" Nearly 200 selections from the best prose and poetical literature of 
the English language are here assembled for the uses of the student of 
elocution. * * * The collection is valuable as a treasury of 
literary gems, apart from its worth as a manual of declamation." — 
Tribune, Chicago. 

"The volume consists in a great measure of fresh specimens that 
have recently found their way into current literature, and present the 
charm of novelty with the merit of good writing. The ancient stream is 
thus enriched with supplies from new fountains, and living productions 
take the place of the veteran pieces which have grown old in the course 
of protracted service. * * * Tiiey are illustrations of the best 
literature of the day."— TriSMJie, New York. 

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JANSEN, McCLURG «& CO., Pu'Jisliers, Chicago, 111. 



" I know of no sermons, in the truest sense, more Christian." 

— George William Curtis. 



Truths for To-day. 

BY PROF. DAVID SWING. 



First Series, 12mo, 325 pages ; Price, $1.50. 
Sec.nd Series, IZmo, 294 pages; Price $1.50. 



The volumes ( published in uniform style) are sold together or 
separately. 

" The American pulpit has sent forth few volumes of sermons richer in 
thought, more devout m sentiment, more admirable in statement, or fairer 
in outward fashioning, than this volume of sermons of Mr. awing."— The 
Independent. 

"People go out from under his preaching with a renewed belief in 
divine laws and a fresh sense of the beauty and right of truth. They 
catch from his discourses a new apprehension of the necessity and virtue 
of mutual tolerance, forgiveness and fr.endship, and reverence among 
men, and are enveloped with a new and blessed atmosphere of love and 
peace." — Chicago Tribune. 

" Fresh and manly, full of generous Christian feeling, and without a 
taint of heresy. To be sure, Mr, Swing is not at all violent and overbear- 
ing in dealing with those with whom he does not agree on theological 
opinions. He evidently believes that non-Churchmen have rights which 
t hurchmen are bound to respect, but holds firmly to his own views, and 
defends them manluUy." — Boston Daily Advertiser. 

" Mr. Swing is singularly felicitous in the selection of his topics and 
illustrations from the interests of common life. He never takes us into a 
world of dreams and shadows— still less into the land of the shadow of 
death— but into a sphere of rich and glowing vitality. His discourses 
abound in constant surprises, springing from first and original sources, 
which present an exhaustless field of instruction."— iVet« York Tiibune. 

"As sacred compositions, they captivate by a sweetness that is as natural 
to them as tints to the rose or flavor to the strawberry. 'I hey are logical 
without a display of argumentation, and poetical without any sacrifice 
of directness or sincerity. While one's reason is appealed to all along, 
the language of the appeal comes up all blossoming and fragrant with 
the heart. It would be hard to find, in the same compass, so much real 
poetry and logic in vital union as in tnese discourses. And here is the 
secret of their power." — The Alliance. 

SjM hy hooksellers, or mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price, hy 
JANSEJf, McCLUEG & CO., Pulblishers, Chicago, lU. 



TALES FROM FOREIGN TONGUES, 

COMPRISING 

MEMOEIES; ^ story or German love. 

By max MtJLLER. 

GRAZIELLA ; a story op Italian love. 

By a. DE LAMARTINE. 

MAHIE: A STORY of Russian love. 

By ALEX. PUSHKIN. 

MADELEINE ; a story of French love. 

By JULES SANDEAU. 



In neat box, per set, ..... Price, $6.00. 
Sold separately, per volume, . , , Price, $1,50. 



Of "Memories"' the London Academy says: "It is a prose poem. 
* * * It is seldom that a powerful intellect produces any- 

work, however small, that does not bear some m.arks of its special bent, 
and the traces of research and philosophy in this little story are appar- 
ent, while its beauty and pathos show us a fresh phase of a many-sided 
mind, to which we already owe large debts of gratitude." 

Of " Graziella" the Chicago Tribune s&y&'. "It glows with love of the 
beautiful in all nature. * * * It is pure literature, a 

perfect story, couched in perfect words. The sentences have the rhythm 
and flow, the sweetness and tender fancy of the original. It is uniform 
with ' Memories,' and it should stand side by side with that on the 
shelves of every lover of pure, strong thoughts, put in pure, strong 
words. ' Graziella' is a book to be loved." 

Of " Marie" the Cincinnati Gazette says: " This is a Russian love tale, 
written by a Russian poet. It is one of the purest, sweetest little narra- 
tives that we have read for a long time. It is a little classic, and a Russian 
classic, too. That is one of its charms, that it is so distinctively Russian. 
We catch the very breezes of the Steppes, und meet, lace to face, the high- 
souled, simple-minded Russian." 

Of " Madeleine" the New York Evening Te'egram says: "More than 
thirty years ago it received the honor of a prize from the French 
Academy and has since almost be ome a French classic. It abounds 
boih in pathos and wit. Above all. it is a pure story, dealing with love 
of the must exalted kind. It is, indeed, a wonder that a tale so fresh, so 
sweet, so pure as this has not sooner been introduced to the English- 
speaking public." 

Sold ty tooTcsellers, or mailed, postpaid, on receipt of pric^, hy 
JANSEN, McCLURG & CO., Publishers, Chicago, 111. 



SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE, 

FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. 

By miss E. S. KIRKLAND. 

authoe of "six little cooks," "dora's housekeeping," etc. 



ISmo.f extra cloth, black and gilt, , • IPrice, $1.50. 



"A very ably written sTcetcli of French history, from the earliest times 
to the foundation of the existing Kepuhlic." — Cincinnati Gazette. 

" The narrative is not dry on a single page, and the little history may 
be commended as the best of its kind that has yet appeared."— £tiZ^iiw, 
Philadelphia. 

"A book both instructive and entertaining. It is not a dry compen- 
dium of dates and facts, but a charmingly written history.' — Christian 
Union, New York. 

"After a careful examination of its contents, we are able to conscien- 
tiously give it our heartiest commendation. We know no elementary 
history of France that can at ail be compared witn iV— Living Chui-ch. 

"A spirited and entertaining sketch of the French people and nation 
—one that will seize and hold the attention of all bright boys and girls 
who have a chance to read iV— Sunday After-noon, Springfield, (Mass.) 

" We find its descriptions universally good, that it is admirably simple 
and direct in style, without waste of words or timidity of opinion. The 
book represents a great deal of patient labor and conscientious study. — 
Courant, Hartford, CL 

" Miss Kirkland has composed her ' Short History of France' in the 
way in which a history for young people ought to be written ; that is, she 
has aimed to present a consecutive and agreeable story, irom which the 
reader can not only learn the names of kings and the succession of 
events, but cau also receive a vivid and permanent impression as to the 
characters, modes of life, and the spirit of different periods."— T/ie 
Nation, N. Y. 

Sold ly tooksetlers, or mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price, ly 
JAJ^SEX, McCLUKG & CO., Publishers, Chicago, 111. 



'It is as Readable as 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' "—llethodist Recorder, 

Pittsburgh. 

REBECCA; 

OR, 

A WOMAN'S SECRET. 

By MES. CAROLINE F. CORBIN. 

AUTHOR OF "belle AND THE BOYS," ETC. 



12mo., 3S9 pages, Price, $1.50. 



" One of the strongpst, most thoughtful, and at the same time other- 
wise attractive stories that have lately come to us."— TAe Advance. 

"A story vsrhich grasps the reader's interest at the first page and holds 
ittot^^elasd * * * a work of intense dramatic power. ''—J/itemr. 

" We have read this absorbing story through with a sense of wonder, 
admiration and delight. It is one of the most powerful compositions 
that the age has produced."— ilfei/iodist Recorder, Pittsburgh. 

"This novel will excite unusual interest with the reading public. 
The work is characterized by thou-jhtful earnestness and a wise liberality, 
and will exercise a wholesome influence."— 2'ri&iifte, Chicago. 

" The peculiar features of the ' woman question' are touched with a 
rare mingling of strength and delicacv * * * It is essentially 
a woman's book about women, aud an interesting fetory besides." — 
Christian Union, New York. 

"So thoroushly packed with good things is this volume— it can 
scarcely be called a novel, notwithstanding its title— tftat to take time to 
to point out each one separately is entirely out of the question. * * * 
Mrs. Corbin has proven herself a writer of more than ordinary ability. — 
The Times, Chicago. 

" It is a book of great power, and in addition to its thrilling interest 
and originality as a story, it treats the Woman Question with rare deli- 
cacy and strength. Every woman who reads the book will be grateful to 
the author for the grand womanliness of each of its women, and for the 
contribution its temper and spint make the question of Woman's Posi- 
tion. — New Covenant. 

Sold hy toohetlers, or mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price, hy 
JANSETf, McCLURG & CO., Publishers, Chicago, 111. 



"Sound, Sensible, and Civilized." — The Nation, N. Y. 



Six Little Cooks, 

Or Aunt Jane's Cooking Class. 
By miss E. S. KIRKLAND, 

Author of "Short History op France," " Dora's Housekeeping," etc. 



12tno,, with Frontispiece, .... Frice, $1.00, 



"We do not think a more useful book for girls has been published." — 
TJie Alliance. 

" It is a capital cookery book, made by a capital story-teller." — San 
Francisco Messenger. 

" We know of one little girl who thinks it a wonderful hoo^.''— Christian 
Register, Boston. 

" While it is really an interesting narrative in itself, it delightfully 
teaches girls just how to follow practically its many recipes."— 6t. Nicholas, 
JSew York. 

" This book is the result of a happy thought. * * * A lucky stroke 
of genius, because it is a good thing well done. It has the charm of a 
bright story of real life, and is a useful essay on tne art of cooking.— Times, 
New York. 

"A praiseworthy versatility enables the author to keep up the form and 
the interest of a story, and now by a picnic, or again by a birthday, or 
unexpected company, or the cook's holiday, or the mistress's illness, to 
furnish a pretext for the intervention of the ' little cooks.' The conver- 
sations are natural and sprightly, and Aunt Jane's directions plain, 
practical, and altogether excellent."— T^ Nation, N. Y. 

" We have not seen in the whole range of our juvenile literature a more 
useful and attractive volume for girls than this. It has the charm of a 
life-like story, and the practical value of a clever essay on the culinary 
art. Aunt Jane, whoever she may he, is an accomplished woman, with 
an unusual" talent for sprightly writing and an extended knowledge of 
the subtle and skillful ways and means involved in the management of 
an elegant cuisine. The six little folks to whom she gives lessons in the 
craft of cooking, are real little folks, carrying on a lively chatter all 
through their busy work, just as little folks do wherever they are— saying 
the most natural things in the moat unaffected and amusing manner." — 
Tribune, Chicago. 

Sold iy tooTcsellers, or mailed post paid, on receipt of price, hy 
JAXSE5, McCLURG & CO., Publishers, Chicago, 111. 



'Lively, Interesting and Instructive." — Christian Union, N. Y. 



DORA'S HOUSEKEEPING; 

By miss E. S. KIRKLAND. 

AUTHOR OP "six LITTLE COOKS," "A SHORT HISTORY OF FRANCE," ETC. 



12fno.f with Frontispiece, .... Price, $1.00. 



"It ought to make devotees to the noble art of cooking of those who 
read it. — Cincinnati Times. 

" Never was a more tempting bait thrown out wherewith to inveigle 
the vast tribes of little girls into being capable women."— Tirrees. 

" It occupies a hitherto untilled field in literature, and girls and their 
mothers will be equally delighted with it."— The Advance, Chicago. 

" It is intended for girls in their early teens, and so appetizing are the 
recipes, that they would almost turn an anchorite into a cook. In short, 
one can't look over the book without getting hungry,"— Tribune, Ntw 
York. 

'* It is practical as well as entertaining, with Its directions and re- 
cipes, and ought lo find a good many interested readers among the little 
girls who are anxious to grow up with some knowledge of housekeep- 
ing."— Posi and Tribune, Detroit. 

" Wise mothers of that excellent sort who make the household a well 
ordered kingdom, will appreciate the worth of such a story, and its fit- 
ness for presentation to daughters who are in training, after the good old 
sensible plan, for the proper performance of the daily duties of life." — 
Evening Post, New York. 

" The story does not flag, either, and is enlivened with some good 
character-sketching. The housewifely advice is sound, sensible and 
civilized. We cordially recommend these two little books (,' Dora's 
House-keeping" and "Six Little Cooks') as containing the whole gos- 
pel of domestic economy."— T/ie Nation, New York. 

Sold ty hoohellers, or mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price, ty 

JANSEJ^, McCLURG & CO., Publishers, Chicago, 111. 



^'?'^. 



